Anne Parillaud Movies

Catherine Breillat's adaptation of An Old Mistress stars Fu'ad Ait Aatou as Ryno de Marigny, and Asia Argento as Vellini, two lovers in 19th century Paris. The two have been passionately involved for nearly a decade, but de Marigny attempts to end their relationship now that he is engaged to Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida), a respectable young woman. As the bride-to-be's grandmother forces de Marigny to confront his past as a notorious womanizer, the film flashes back to reveal the intense decade the lovers shared. Although de Marigny appears to want to shut Vellini out forever, her passions may be far too much for him to deny. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

The French film Tout Pour Plaire (Thirtyfive Something) concerns three Parisian women taking stock of their lives and relationships as they move into their late thirties. Juliette (Mathilde Seigner) is a struggling lawyer scheduled to move into a loft with her boyfriend, but his commitment jitters lead him to dump her during the walk-through. Recklessly resolved, she takes the place anyway, though she can't afford it. As her spending increases in an attempt to fill the void and find new love, she spirals into debt and must go before a friendly banker (Pascal Elbe) to get her credit extended. Marie (Judith Godrëche), a doctor in a public hospital, has fewer financial problems, but her issue is her layabout artist husband (Mathias Mlekuz), who hasn't sold a painting in years and never helps with the kids or housework. When a handsome filmmaker takes an interest in her, Marie contemplates infidelity. Ad agency executive Florence (Anne Parillaud) can't catch a break either at work or home. When she's finally entrusted with a big account, her boss continues to treat her like an underling and backtrack on his decision. Her husband (Thierry Neuvic), an exhausted and disinterested CEO, treats her with indifference, and appears to be having an affair. As the women meet for lunches and other social engagements, they help make sense of how things have changed since their carefree days as childhood friends. ~ Derek Armstrong, Rovi

Gangsters is the directorial debut of veteran writer and actor Olivier Marchal, who spent ten years as a police detective in France. Frank (Richard Anconina) is captured and interrogated by the police, who want him to reveal the location of a vaulable briefcase. Flashbacks tell the story of the missing briefcase, in which Frank and Little Claude (Jean-Louis Tribes) are present during a violent burglary in a nightclub. Anne Parillaud (from La Femme Nikita) plays the fearless prostitute Nina. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

Oscar-nominated Randall Wallace (Braveheart) made his directorial debut with this adaptation of the 1848 classic by Alexandre Dumas (1802-70), featuring Leonardo DiCaprio in a dual role. Years have passed since the Three Musketeers, Aramis (Jeremy Irons), Athos (John Malkovich), and Porthos (Gerard Depardieu) fought together with their friend D'Artagnan (Gabriel Byrne). The arrogant, tyrannical King Louis XIV (Leonardo DiCaprio) desires the beautiful Christine (Judith Godreche), so he orders her suitor Raoul (Peter Sarsgaard), the son of Athos, off to face death at the front. He also sends Aramis to kill the leader of a Jesuit rebellion. Louis is unaware that his loyal protector and informant, D'Artagnan, is the secret lover of his mother, Queen Anne (Anne Parillaud). Louis' younger twin brother, Philippe (also DiCaprio) is the man in the iron mask, imprisoned for the past six years. Arthos and Porthos plan to free Philippe, abduct Louis and replace him by putting Philippe on the throne. French location scenes include the Chateau de Fontainbleau. Previous adaptations: Allan Dwan's The Iron Mask (1929) with Douglas Fairbanks, the 1939 James Whale version with Louis Hayward, Patricia Medina in Lady in the Iron Mask (1952), Henri Decoin's Le Masque de Fer (1962), Mike Newell's 1976 TV movie with Richard Chamberlain, and Ken Annakin's The Fifth Musketeer (1978, aka Behind the Iron Mask) with Beau Bridges, Lloyd Bridges, Sylvia Kristel, Ursula Andress, Cornel Wilde, Jose Ferrer, Rex Harrison, and Olivia de Havilland. A second film titled The Man in the Iron Mask was released in 1998, a low-budget effort from director William Richert. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

Adam Coleman Howard wrote, directed, and stars in this gallows-comedy misfire as Ari Rose, an unsuccessful would-be actor whose treatment by Hollywood has driven him quite mad. He falls for a beautiful woman named Helen-Catherine (Anne Parillaud from La Femme Nikita and Innocent Blood) but strangles her when she rejects him. Quite demented, Ari takes the dead woman home, makes love to her corpse, and comes to the belief that she is still alive and very much in love with him. Soon, he's taking her around in public without anyone seeming to notice her condition. Indeed, in what was probably intended as the film's satiric highlight, Ari takes Helen-Catherine's body to an audition where her supposed intensity lands her the role. If any of this sounds remotely amusing, it isn't, and at 108 minutes takes an unfunny situation to nearly epic depths of tasteless boredom. What is more astonishing than the fact that this pedantic, necrophilic take on Weekend at Bernie's was made at all is the quality of the supporting cast. Amanda Plummer (who was in the equally perverse Hysteria the same year), Emily Lloyd, Val Kilmer, Famke Janssen, and Seymour Cassel are among the actors far too talented for this dreck, and it isn't so much the subject matter which is at fault. Certainly Very Bad Things and Dead-Alive, among other films, have proven that tasteless material can be funny, and even -- as in the wonderfully morbid The Loved One -- satirical. The real problem here is that Adam Coleman Howard is equally inept in all three of his capacities on this film. His script is poor (satirizing Hollywood even less incisively than the wretched Burn, Hollywood, Burn), his direction is hamfisted and self-indulgent, and his onscreen persona is completely devoid of charisma or interest. It is usually the case that when tasteless subject matter is handled poorly, it seems even more offensive than it really is. In this case, however, it is handled so poorly as to merely provoke yawns. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

A small man with a big story examines the facts of his life in this drama. As Frank Bois enjoys the success of his first novel, he finds himself looking back on his highly unusual life. Frank's mother Bernadette (Anne Parillaud) was a French woman who, after the death of her parents and several close friends in World War II, smuggled herself aboard an Allied troop ship sailing to Ireland, exchanging sexual favors for silence among the soldiers who discovered her on board. A kind-hearted customs agent, Jack Kelly (Gabriel Byrne), allowed Bernadette to enter Ireland, and they soon became lovers, even though she was already carrying the child of one of the soldiers from the ship. Bernadette soon gave birth to young Frankie (Alan Pentony), who suffered from dwarfism. As he grew older, Frankie fell for Jack's daughter Emma (Georgina Cates), who clearly didn't care for him, while Jack generously shared his knowledge of astronomy with Frankie. Eventually, Bernadette encountered Terry Klout (Matt Dillon), an American soldier from the troop ship, who offered to marry her. Bernadette and Frankie accompanied Terry to his home in Texas, but both mother and son felt like fish out of water in the American West, and they returned to the Irish home they came to love. A sadder but wiser Bernadette eventually committed suicide, and Frank began to draw upon his life experiences as he put pen to paper for his first book. Based on the novel The Dork of Cork by Chet Raymo, Frankie Starlight was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A white, Inuit boy named Avik is the focus of New Zealand director Vincent Ward's meditation on race and romance. In the opening moments of the movie, set in 1931 in the Arctic-Canadian settlement Nunataaq, Avik (portrayed initially by Robert Joamie) lives under the watchful eye of his grandmother (Jayko Pitseolak). While tagging along after British cartographer Walter Russell (Patrick Bergin), Avik falls prey to the "white man's disease,"--tuberculosis; to assuage his own guilt, Russell takes the boy to a Montreal clinic to recover. There, Avik meets Albertine, a mixed-blood Indian girl, and the two fall in love, but their relationship is quickly broken up by the Mother Superior who is in charge of the clinic. Years later, Avik again meets Russell, who this time is on a mission to recover the German U-boat lying wrecked off the coast of Nunataaq. Avik asks for Russell's help in learning the whereabouts of Albertine, and he gives the cartographer a chest X-ray of the girl which he has carried with him since their separation. More time elapses, and Avik (now played by Jason Scott Lee) has become a British bombardier fighting in World War II. He is sought out by Albertine (Anne Parillaud), who has become Russell's mistress. Still, she begins an affair with Avik; Russell soon finds out, and as revenge sends Avik and his crew on a suicide mission of which Avik is the lone survivor. Despondent over his war experiences, Avik flees to Canada, where he becomes an alcoholic; decades later, he is sought out by Rainee (Clotilde Courau), the daughter born from his affair with Albertine. On his way to the girl's wedding, Avik is killed in an accident; his body washes up on the beach at Nunataaq, a wedding gift still clutched in his arms. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

The serpentine plotline of Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita begins its 117-minute slither when punkish, psychotic, and drug-ridden Nikita (Anne Parillaud) fires her gun into a cop's face following the stick-up of a drug store, and is promptly imprisoned. She is thrown into a dank cell, then injected with a substance and told it is a lethal toxin. Instead of dying, however, the comes to in an all-white interrogation room, where French intelligence officer Bob (Tchéky Karyo), informs her that an alternate to execution exists: she can receive covert government training as an assassin. She accepts the bid, is rigorously trained, and later returns to society as a seemingly normal and gentle civilian, but falls in love with a drugstore employee while she's waiting for that first government assignment. The paradoxical concept of a young woman blossoming socially while carrying out cold-blooded murders was downplayed when La Femme Nikita was remade in America as the silly and disappointing Point of No Return, directed by John Badham with Bridget Fonda in the lead. A far less sociopathic TV-series version of La Femme Nikita surfaced on the USA cable network in early 1997. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Juillet (Laetitia Gabrielli) is a young orphan girl who returns to the town she was born in to find her mother. She tries to befriend her yuppie neighbors Marie (Anne Parillaud) and Jacques (Eric Damain) with comic consequences. The thrilling part (supposedly) of the film finds Marbas (Daniel Desmars) as a timid psycho killer who targets pretty young women. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

In this thriller, a private detective disregards the many warnings he has been given and continues searching for a missing blind girl. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

West German filmmaker Hubert Frank directed this standard European exploitation film which is notable only for a star turn by the 20-year-old then-unknown actress Anne Parillaud (La Femme Nikita). Parillaud plays Patricia Cook, a wealthy and free-spirited young woman with a disapproving father and an extremely promiscuous lifestyle. Her father dies of a heart attack, presumably because of Patricia's scandalous behavior, and Patricia ends up dating Harry Miller (Sascha Hehn), a racecar driver who doesn't know whether to marry Patricia so she can keep her father's millions or murder her in exchange for a large sum of money promised by a mysterious figure. The plot itself is really secondary, serving primarily as an excuse for Parillaud to shed her clothing, engage in softcore lesbian groping with her cousin Pussy, and run topless through a monastery until the lusty monks give chase. Jose-Luis de Villalonga (Julie Christie's Italian husband in Darling) is among several surprising familiar faces in the cast. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi