Louise Marleau Movies
- 2002
A forward-looking woman attempts to teach a primitive child the ways of humanity as her neighbors prefer to remain in the past in this drama from Michael Mackenzie, which he adapted from his own play. In 1888, a wealthy heiress from Philadelphia (Patricia Clarkson) marries a British Baron (Colm Feore) and with him moves to Paris. Since the Baron travels often as he plies his trade as an art dealer, the Baroness finds herself alone at home, without friends or acquaintances. Hoping to attract a circle of intellectually challenging companions, the Baroness takes it upon herself to design a salon, which, along with up-to-the-minute furnishings and impressionist paintings, includes such new technology as electric lighting and a phonograph. However, the Baroness' new salon fails to earn her the respect of her neighbors, who tell the Baron they find his new bride's fascination with technology and democracy boorish and laughable. Making things worse, the Baroness comes to the realization that her husband is more interested in her money than her mind, and his sexual demands of her are brutal and violent. In time, the Baroness devotes her time to a new project -- a feral child (Caroline Dhavernas) has been found in a stable, where she lived with a heard of pigs, and the Baroness takes it upon herself to teach the child to walk, speak, and behave in a civilized manner, a task many believe is doomed to failure. The Baroness and the Pig was screened in competition at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Patricia Clarkson, Caroline Dhavernas, (more)
- 2000
A joint project of the CBC TV network and the Raido-Canada service, this ambitious documentary series traced the History of Canada literally from the beginning--15,000 BC, to be exact. The subsquent episodes were nothing if not ambitious, covering the progress of the Dominion right up to 1850 AD. The seventeenth and final episode, covering the years 1976 to 1990, was open-ended enough to bear the title "In An Uncertain World". Three years in the making, the series utilized interviews, rare photographs, precious paintings and etchings, and vividly dramatic re-enactments. Telecast in English and French versions, Canada: A People's History ran from October 22, 2000 to November 18, 2001, yielding such ancillary projects as a two-volume book, a website, and a bestselling CD. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maggie Huculak, Rene-Daniel Dubois, (more)
- 1997
In a style evocative of Fellini at his most surreal, this bizarre French Canadian fantasy follows the romance between a young filmmaker and a bearded lady from a local circus during the 1960s. The story begins in a contemporary theater where a projectionist describes, to movie director Rex Prince, the ghostly spirit that seems to be haunting his film. The story then races backward to the 1960s when a half-mad, idealistic Rex was busily making his first film, a Marxist tract depicting poverty in Montreal. Edouard Dore, a well-connected editor works with him and it is he who takes Rex to a carnival late one night to meet the performers in a freakshow. The first person Rex meets is Le Grand Zenon, a hulking one-eyed fellow with the amazing ability to use his eye to project movie images on a screen with neither a projector nor film. Later Rex meets the beautiful but facially hirsute Paula Paul de Nerval. For Rex it is almost love at first sight, so he is therefore upset when, only a few hours after their meeting, she takes off to join a Cajun circus in Louisiana . A few months later, Rex, still obsessed with Paula, races southward in an Edsel to become a human cannonball at the same circus as she. The story jumps back to the present to Rex's latest film "La Comtesse de Baton Rouge," a chronicle of his strange love affair with Paula. Up to this point, the story has been surreal and quite poetic, but as Rex's movie unspools, the film becomes a zany comedy. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1992
In this drama, an avaricious city boy leaves his LA home to meet his estranged father on the family homestead in Quebec. They have both inherited the land from a recently deceased uncle. The father has stayed close to his rural roots and cannot understand why his son is so indifferent to his inheritance that he wants to sell it and return to the city with his profits. A conflict ensues, and eventually, the young man begins to appreciate the land. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1990
In this tragicomedy, Toni (Tony Niardi) is the director of a staged rendition of Othello in Montreal. It is a pet project of his, financed by his loving mafia uncle. Unbeknownst to him, the audiences are also rounded up (and paid) by the same uncle. Some of them have seen every performance of this tragic play, and are understandably bored, so when the backstage romantic shenanigans of the actors result in absurd situations onstage, the audience is delighted. There are a huge number of romantic situations going on in this film at the same time. One of them involves Gaston (Jean Lapointe), a somewhat world-weary jazz musician, and Florence (Louise Marleau), a glamorous middle-aged woman who has been pining for him for years. Another involves to members of the musician's jazz trio. Yet another involves the play's Desdemona, Soledad (Charlotte Laurier), the girlfriend of the man playing Othello, who can't keep his hands off his (female) dresser. She is also Florence's neice. This busy story pokes fun at many local foibles and was a huge success in Quebec. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean LaPointe, Louise Marleau, (more)
- 1989
Crusing Bar was written by Michel Cote, who plays a major character. Actually he plays four major characters, in this drama about the Canadian dating scene. The disguises are crucial to the plot, which in itself is loose enough to accommodate several anecdotal scenes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Louise Marleau, Genevieve Rioux, (more)
- 1986
Albane Guilhe stars in this French-Canadian film as Anne Trister, a brilliant but emotionally unstable painter/ sculptor. After the death of her father, Anne returns from Switzerland to her home town in Quebec. Setting up a studio, she becomes obsessed with her work, to the extent that she grows farther and farther from her Swiss lover. Anne enters into an affair with her childhood friend Louise Marleau, which also takes second place to her art. While hospitalized due to a fall from her scaffold, Anna discovers that her studio has been condemned and demolished--and with it her life's work. Somehow this disaster, coupled with her ongoing relationship with Marleau, enables Anne to find inner peace at last. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Albane Guilhe, Louise Marleau, (more)
- 1984
Even though the protagonist of the Canadian Femme De L'Hotel is a female filmmaker, one would think twice before suggesting that this effort by Swiss-born director Lea Pool is autobiographical. Paule Baillargeon portrays a well-known director who returns to her home town of Montreal to film a high-budget musical drama. At her hotel, Paule has a brief but unsettling encounter with a suicidal elderly woman (Louise Marleau). This element of the plot is briefly forgotten as we get to know the actors in Paule's current project. Then she meets the old lady again, and with mounting incredulity Paule discovers that the actual events in the woman's life mirror the fictional events in the director's film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paule Baillargeon, Louise Marleau, (more)
Following the surprising success of his cheapjack Star Wars knockoff, Star Crash, Italian director Luigi Cozzi was given the helm of this cheapjack Alien knockoff. An alien cyclops causes a man to cover the Earth with nasty eggs (sometimes made of silicone, sometimes close-ups of common olives). The eggs release gelatinous gunk which makes people explode, and it's all part of the alien's plan to take over the world. Cozzi, a less-talented protégé of Dario Argento, at least gets a good soundtrack by using his mentor's house band, Goblin, but delivers a bad film nonetheless. The director admits that the ludicrous monster was made of badly painted papier-mache, requiring 96 separate cuts to look convincing in its big scene. It didn't work. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ian McCullough, Louise Monroe, (more)
- 1981
In this downbeat story of life inside a women's prison, there is more crime inside than out. When the inmates see that a woman is soon to be admitted for killing a young boy, they begin to plan her murder. A kind of ad hoc council gets together to decide who will do the deed, and they pick a woman about to be released from jail. The woman does not want to carry out a murder with only a few days left to her sentence, but the weirdly tribal council and their inexplicable dogma of balancing one murder on the outside with another on the inside, force her into accepting. Even the warden is not exempt from immoral and subhuman conduct as she joins in the conspiracy. This is obviously not a film for all viewers. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Louise Marleau, Francoise Dorner, (more)
- 1981
- R
Before his death in 1993, director Francis Mankiewicz was Canadian television's premiere filmmaker. One of his rare theatrical films, Les Bons Debarras, was also among his best (despite its overlength); certainly the judges of Canada's Genie Awards thought so when honoring the film with their "Best Picture" award for 1981. Set amongst a middle-class Quebec family, the film concerns itself with a love triangle, consisting of Charlotte Laurier, Germaine Houde and Marie Tifo. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charlotte Laurier, Marie Tifo, (more)
- 1979
Four teenage friends talk to each other about the trials and tribulations--and the up times--of maturing into women. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1978
- R
In Hungary, 12-year-old Andras Vadya supported himself during World War II by serving as a pimp for prostitutes. Once the war is over, he tries his hand at a number of different jobs, but has a sexual fixation on "older" women. Andras (Tom Berenger) tells the story of seven of his affairs. One affair, when he was still a quite young man, was with Bobbie (Susan Strasberg), a woman whose anti-communist views put her in danger in postwar Hungary. In Praise of Older Women features many sexual scenes and situations. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Berenger, Karen Black, (more)
- 1971
The Awakening is a minor-league Canadian "art" film, ideally suited for the Espresso crowd. Jacques Riberolles and Louise Marceau star as a priest and nun, respectively. The priest suffers from erotic dreams, while the nun yearns for physical fulfillment. Both renounce their vows and leave their village, only to bump into each other months later. Now fully able to consummate their love, Riberolles and Marceau are still racked by guilt. The original title of The Awakening was the more appropriate L'Amour Humain. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Louise Marleau, Jacques Riberolles, (more)
- 1964
Filmed in French, the Canadian Adolescents consists of three short tales of the trials and tribulations of teenhood. In "Fiametta", Micaela Esdra moons over her deceased father, whose omniprescent memory squelches her mother's latest romance. "Genevieve" features Genevieve Bujold and Louise Marleau as close friends who drift apart after handsome Bernard Arcand honors Bujold with a kiss. And in "Marie-France and Veronica", Veronice Duval and Nadine Ballot simultaneously experience a sexual awakening while visiting Paris. Though three directors worked on The Adolescents, the film maintains a consistency of mood and quality throughout. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
