Jean-Pierre Léaud Movies

Titled after the name of a little girl's dress size, the coming-of-age drama 36 Fillette follows a couple days in the life of 14-year-old Lili (Delphine Zentout), whose physically mature features contrast with her immature adolescent angst. Away from her home in Paris, she is painfully bored during a summer vacation in a windy little campground near the resort town of Biarritz. She's stuck with her emotionally unavailable parents (Adrienne Bonnet and Jean-Francois Stevenin) and older brother J.P. (Stephane Moquet). After some blatant begging on her part, J.P. eventually agrees to take her out to a disco. They don't have a car, so they hitch a ride from the middle-aged Maurice (Etienne Chicot), who is out cruising in his sports car. Maurice and J.P. go to a disco, but Lili is too young to get in. She spends the evening at a café talking to the celebrity musician Boris Golovine (Jean-Pierre Leaud), but she agrees to meet Maurice for a date at midnight. After much pleading with the doorman, Lili is allowed in to the disco where she dances with Maurice. Eventually, she leaves the club with him and spends the evening in his fancy hotel room. 36 Fillette was written and directed by Catherine Brelliat, who adapted the screenplay from her own semi-autobiographical novel. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

A waiter discovers that good taste can be dangerous in this offbeat psychological drama from France. Nicolas (Jean-Pierre Lorit) is a young man living in bohemian poverty in Lyon, sharing a flat with his girlfriend Beatrice (Florence Thomassin) and three of their friends. Nicolas works part-time as a server, and one night a customer asks him to taste his hors d'oeuvres and see if he can identity the ingredients. Nicolas' palate meets the challenge, and the customer introduces himself as Frederic Delamont (Bernard Giraudeau), a wealthy business tycoon. Frederic hires Nicolas as his official food taster at a handsome salary. Frederic also discovers that Nicolas wears the same size shoes and suits, and he begins costuming Nicolas in his cast-offs. While Beatrice isn't comfortable with their newly luxurious lifestyle, Nicolas takes to it readily, until he becomes seriously ill after eating chemically-tainted seafood. It seems that Frederic loathes seafood, and wanted to condition Nicolas to hate it too -- this was to be the first step toward turning Nicolas into someone who could duplicate Frederic's likes and dislikes on all levels. Une Affaire De Gout was based on a novel by Philippe Balland. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In the fourth installment of François Truffaut's Antoine Doniel series, this romantic comedy shows how Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud) went from being a mischievous boy to an adorably charming young man of 26. Domicile Conjugal begins with Antoine settling down with Christine (Claude Jade), his girlfriend from the previous film, Baisers volés. He finds himself accepted and loved by his wife and her family, so the young couple move in to an apartment building together. They live in a lively neighborhood of interesting characters, such as the old man who never leaves and the opera singer who fights with his wife. Antoine finds work as a florist painting roses, while Christine makes a living by teaching violin lessons. After he gets involved in an accidental fire at the florist's, he gets a new job with an American corporation where he steers radio-controlled boats around a pond all day. A big change occurs when Christine becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby boy, while Antoine grows increasingly distant. Eventually, he becomes infatuated with a Japanese girl, Kyoko (Hiroko Berghauer), resulting in some shifts in lifestyle. The fifth and final Antoine Doniel film L'Amour en fuite was released in 1979, picking up the story with Antoine after he reaches his thirties. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

As in François Truffaut's award-winning first picture, 400 Blows, Jean-Pierre Leaud once again takes up the role of a besieged and troubled teen in Boulevard. But that ends the points of similarity between the dramas, since this is a routine and uneven film, not up to director Julien Duviver's usual standard. This time around, the young hero is a sixteen-year-old by the name of Georges whose problems do not stem as much from himself as from the people around him. After running away from home, he has rather shattering encounters with an oversize striptease diva and two aggressive gay men, as well as an on-going antagonism with a boxer who is as pleasant as a wounded bull. These run-ins with life on the streets inevitably have their effect on Georges, no longer as naive as when he first left home. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Starting with a clear objective -- Peter, the director filming "Swan Lake" (Jean-Pierre Leaud) needs to replace an actor who is not working out -- this story then progresses erratically and ends in confusion. Peter stops work on his film and leaves to take a train with his wife when he sees an attractive young woman standing on the station's platform. Inspired by some exciting image, he rushes off the train and spirits the woman off to his shooting site where they run into the actor who was fired in the first place (he missed his train), and Peter's mother. The interaction of these four people continue through to the end of the film. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This disturbing story of religious and political confusion in Latin America finds the CIA trying to infiltrate rebels loyal to a puppet government. A local guerilla fighter is tortured by a priest and his cronies who take sadistic pleasure in the torment of their victims. A blonde woman loyal to a shadowy operative is stripped naked, thrown in a cage and crucified by the sinful and sadistic spiritual scum. The guerilla eventually escapes to exact revenge on the enemy. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

A filmmaker is attempting to complete an ambitious project in the midst of a family tragedy in this self-referential drama from writer and director Tsai Ming-Liang. Hsaio-Kong (Lee Kang-Sheng) is a director from Taiwan who is soon to begin shooting his next picture, a stylized adaptation of Salome, in France, though first he has to help his elderly mother (Lu Yi-Ching) with some plumbing problems. Hsaio-Kong arrives in Paris to discover his producers have cast a well-known model with no acting experience (Laetitia Casta) in the leading role, which adds to the challenge of working in a language in which he's not fluent and having a leading man (Jean-Pierre Leaud) who seems to have lost his memory. Hsaio-Kong's troubles with the shoot are at once exacerbated and made insignificant when he learns of the death of his mother. Featuring guest appearances from Fanny Ardant, Nathalie Baye and Jeanne Moreau, Face was an official selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Director Jean-Luc Godard pokes fun at the follies and injustices of small-time filmmaking in this drama-comedy about two apparent has-beens who are trying their best to get together the funds and the cast for a last, desperate bid for cinematic fame and fortune. The duo (Jean-Claude Mocky and Jean-Pierre Leaud) and their assistants mull over the meaning and purpose of cinema, but at the same time, the cattle-call for their proposed new production does not rise above its bovine metaphor. While eyeing beauteous new actresses with a dash of lasciviousness, the pair are also keeping track of would-be backers with more than a dash of cunning manipulation. Along the way, everything from hypocrisy to Roman Polanski gets a drubbing. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Henri Langlois was, in many respects, the ultimate film fan. In 1936, at the age of 22, Langlois became (along with Jean Mitry and Georges Franju) one of the founders of the Cinémathèque Française, a theater and museum devoted to preserving the history of the motion picture. Initially a tiny operation financed by private funds, the Cinémathèque, with time, grew into Europe's most important film archive, collecting and preserving prints of rare films from all over the world and protecting many rare gems of the French cinema from destruction during the Nazi occupation of World War II. Langlois' enthusiasm for sharing the treasures of his collection with others helped spawn a film-crazy generation who created the French New Wave of the '50s, and in time, the French government acknowledged the importance of the Cinémathèque's work by financing their endeavors. In 1968, the French minister of culture, André Malraux, responded to Langlois' difficult personality and sloppy bookkeeping by pulling the government's financing of his projects, which led to an international outcry leading to the shutdown of the Cannes Film Festival by activists and film buffs. The Cinémathèque's funding and Langlois' leadership were later restored, and in 1973, his work in film preservation was honored with a special Academy Award. Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinémathèque is a documentary which chronicles the life, times, and passions of the legendary archivist and includes interviews with his friends, contemporaries, and colleagues -- including Claude Berri, Claude Chabrol, Jack Valenti, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The kidnapping and assassination of Moroccan political activist Mehdi Ben Barka, fictionalized in Yves Boisset's L'Attentat in 1972, gets a more historically accurate treatment in Serge Le Péron's noirish docudrama, the tabloid-headline-titled I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed. The film is narrated by cynical ex-con Georges Figon (Charles Berling), whose dead body is shown at the film's opening. Figon talks about the heady times, as newsreel footage of the civil rights movement and the anti-colonial uprisings of the 1960s is shown. In flashbacks, Figon wants to be a film producer, and has connections to screenwriter Marguerite Duras (Josiane Balasko) who puts him in touch with director Georges Franju (Jean-Pierre Léaud). Figon keeps promising to make his actress girlfriend, Anne-Marie Coffinet (Fabienne Babe), a star. But he still has ties to the underworld, and through them he meets the shady Chtouki (Azize Kabouche), a Moroccan operative who offers him a lot of money to scrap his current filmmaking plans to make a documentary about the worldwide anti-colonial movement. Chtouki's main interest is that the exiled Barka (Simon Abkarian) be hired as a consultant on the doc, so that he'll come to Paris to meet with Figon, Franju, and Philippe Bernier (Mathieu Amalric). On the day of the meeting, Figon watches from the café window as the French police intercept Barka and take him away. After witnessing what becomes of Barka, Figon grows increasingly concerned for his own safety, and goes to the press with a sensationalized version of the events. I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed was shown by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2006 as part of their annual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

Jane B. is London-born actress and recording star Jane Birkin. Agnes V. is Belgian filmmaker and "grandmother of the New Wave" Agnes Varda. Jane B. Par Agnes V is a cinematic recounting of Birkin's career, from her breakthrough appearance as one of the nude models in Blow-Up to her pinnacle as star of such films as La Femme de Ma Vie (1986). It is also the story of Birkin and Varda's close relationship, made stronger by their mutual admiration and their lifelong fascination with feminist themes. Viewers who prefer straightforward, objective documentaries rather than radicalized film techniques, may not appreciate Jane B. par Agnes V. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Several internationally known directors contributed to this generally adept and compelling series of five brief vignettes on love and its many ramifications. François Truffaut starts things off with a story of innocent love between a young man in his mid-teens and a slightly older woman. Renzo Rossellini continues in sketch two about a tough mistress who keeps her lover on a short tether. Shintaro Ishihara renders the only violent episode -- that of a disturbed young worker who becomes a real lady-killer. Marcel Ophüls (son of the late and great Max Ophüls) directs an upbeat tale about a journalist who accepts the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood when a brief fling with a woman ends in a pregnancy. The last vignette, directed by the well-known Polish helmer Andrzej Wajda, is about a brave act by a young soldier whose deed gains him the admiration of a woman, but the response from other men his age is something different. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide