Michel Piccoli Movies

Claire (Laure Marsac) is a 16-year-old young woman who discovers her father Pierre (Bernard Giraudeau) is not a healing physician but a killer with a bloody war record in the Lebanese conflict. She runs away from home and into the arms of Kamal (Michal Albertini). While Pierre stalks two terrorists, Claire and Kamal are violently confronted by Kamal's abandoned wife and family. The ravages of the conflict extend to those who are never participants in the battle but are among the casualties of war. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This parody of the detective-story genre merrily detours into spoofing French foibles as well, making it more of an exercise in verbal gymnastics than a narrative with a mission. Esther (Juliette Binoche) is a veterinarian who is certain that her sister has been murdered by her brother-in-law. She convinces two members of the Academie Francaise, the prestigious institution that protects the virginity of the French language, to investigate. Both men (Michel Serrault and Michel Piccoli) are enamored of the woman and are quite willing to enter into competition for her favors. As might be expected from academicians of any ilk, they are inept at digging into a murder mystery and bumble their way through one incident after another. Corpses continue to pile up (not in front of the camera, however) while the two men are sidetracked by their interest in language. Given their positions, they do not want that murdered either. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

With ingenious camera work, witty dialogue, and a setting that almost never wanders from the cavernous interior of a mod cafe-bar, this drama by Michel Deville has a lot of pluses. A woman (Jeanne Moreau) and a man (Michel Piccoli, the "nonentity" of the title) jointly run the vast cafe and every night play host to the same four men as they sit around a card table -- a doctor, a journalist, a merchant, and a professor. A seductive woman (Fanny Ardant) lounges around in a hammock nearby. When the police commissioner starts investigating a murder, the four card players become suspects. Charming bits show an irritable "paltoquet" shoving the opening credits off the screen so the story can get going. He also sits around reading the novel from which the screenplay was adapted and provides music with a portable record player. These inventive touches allow the movie to work on several levels at once. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Mixing together the erotic and a theme of imminent death, director Michel Deville has fashioned an increasingly unsettling tale, based on the French novel Sur la Terre Comme au Ciel by Rene Belletto. When David (Christophe Malavoy) arrives at the home of Julia (Nicole Garcia) and Graham (Michel Piccoli) to teach guitar to their teenage daughter, a certain attraction starts between the student and teacher. That disappears when Julia seduces David at his apartment, and the two begin an affair, seemingly with the tacit consent of Julia's husband. Meanwhile, David's neighbor keeps snooping around, and at one point David is saved from a mugger just in the nick of time by a man who turns out to be an assassin for hire -- and hired to kill Graham, Julia's husband. As danger looms on the horizon for David, Graham, Julia, and the assassin himself, tension mounts, and someone's violent death seems inevitable. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Michel Piccoli plays Akiva Liebskind, a Russian chess genius in the Swiss-filmed Dangerous Moves. He is pitted against Soviet exile Pavius Fromm (Alexandre Arbatt), who, since childhood, has dreamed of nothing but defeating Liebskind. Both men soon become obsessed with winning. Already suffering from a weak heart, Liebskind courts a coronary, while the increasingly paranoid Fromm is convinced that his opponent is spying on him from every corner. The KGB enters into the game by attempting to sabotage Fromm, hoping that by doing so they will discredit everyone who's ever publicly opposed the Soviet government. Dangerous Moves was the 1984 recipient of the Best Foreign-Language Picture Academy Award. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Through a series of convoluted turns, like a tornado going through Kansas, director Claude Lelouch has managed to keep a vacuum at the center of his film. A corporate executive (Michel Piccoli and a young actress (Evelyne Bouix) suddenly disappear and reappear and disappear, almost as fast as blinking Christmas tree lights. Since neither can remember what is going on, it is likely that they are suffering from the classic "I was kidnapped by an extraterrestrial" syndrome. And in fact, that may be the case because it seems that some ETs wanted to speak through these two people to tell earthlings to quit gearing up their nuclear arsenals. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays an acting teacher and Charles Aznavour plays a restaurant owner in this complex story -- yet both stars cannot carry the film on their own merits. For many viewers the labyrinth that wends its way to the final credits is a bit difficult to follow, and at the center of the labyrinth is a woefully inadequate ending. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Giovanni (Lou Castel) comes home after his brother's suicide to encounter the same family problems that have been around for years: his mother is a religious fanatic now obsessed with her son's errant spirit, his older brother has a cold and uncaring relationship with his children and his wife, and Giovanni's uncle who runs the wealthy family's house is always out to turn a profit for himself. When Giovanni goes to berate his dead brother's lover for not even coming to his funeral (his brother gave her an apartment and an income, and then she broke off with him because she did not love him), an unexpected attraction starts that builds in intensity as time goes on. Eventually, they start an emotionally-charged relationship that goes up and down like a roller coaster, their conflicts fueled in part by the ghost of the dead brother, by the fact that she is pregnant with his child, and by the difference in their economic status. As their relationship continues, it becomes a question of whether or not they will be able to overcome their differences -- a question that looms larger every day. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Sebastien Grenier (Lino Ventura), a former French spy, is working as a financial analyst in Zurich and cultivating an on-going relationship with Anna Gretz (Krystyna Janda), a German teaching at the university. Then his peaceful existence starts to disintegrate when he is recruited by a top French intelligence operative (Michel Piccoli) to discover how one of their own secret agents was found out and executed in broad daylight by a gang of terrorists. Sebastien starts to work but is immediately put off by the fact that his contacts are being murdered before he can reach them. As he gets deeper and deeper into the case, he comes to realize that he is being used in an elaborate political scheme, a scheme that leads to the death of Anna and a vow to get the killers who have now ruined what is left of his life. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In the style of an operetta, like director Jacques Demy's more famous film the Umbrellas of Cherbourg, this melodramatic story is set in Nantes in 1955 and centers around the tragedies of three or four intertwined lives. First, there is the young steel worker (Richard Berry) who is out on strike and has rented a room from an upper-class widow (Danielle Darrieux), a woman in sympathy with the strikers. The blue-collar worker has a girlfriend he finds less and less interesting just as she is more and more pregnant, and their relationship seems fated to end, one way or another. Then there is Edith (Dominique Sanda), the daughter of the widow, married to a wealthy, impotent, skinflint of a merchant caught up in his own neuroses, and, whether for that reason or several others, Edith is a part-time hooker. One evening she shows up in the worker's rented room, wearing a fur coat and nothing else -- and the two share a night of passion. Now mother, daughter, the worker, and the daughter's husband have formed a very unstable chain of relationships, due to snap because at least one link is exceedingly weak. Enhanced by excellent choreography, this film still did poorly at the box office when it was first released. In order to save it and encourage audiences to see it for its own merits, 76 French critics took out an ad in Le Monde to promote the film, and some critics said that if this movie failed, so would all of French cinema. Perhaps it is not surprising then that Chambre En Ville won the French Critics' Prix Méliès in 1982. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This talky French costume drama chronicles the adventures of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as they attempt to flee Paris during the 1791 revolution. While en route to Varennes, the couple encounter and have philosophical debates with a number of fascinating historical figures including Thomas Paine and Restif de la Bretonne. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Passion, a major film in Jean-Luc Godard's ongoing investigation of the relations between painting and cinema, uses innovative forms to explore political and economic questions. Jerzy Radziwilowicz plays a director shooting a film whose scenes are all reproductions of paintings by Goya, Valasquez, and other European masters. Production comes to a halt when his producers refuse to increase his budget until he explains the film's story to them. Meanwhile, the director is ending an affair with Hanna (Hanna Schygulla), the wife of Michel (Michel Piccoli), who is the manager of the hotel where the film's cast and crew are staying. In a sub-plot, Isabelle Huppert plays a factory worker who attempts to unionize her fellow employees. The story of Passion is elliptical and incomplete. It is a means of presenting a collection of scenes and images on related themes. This kind of story will become the hallmark of Godard's later career. The links among the episodes become even looser in such films as Germany: Year Nine Zero and For Ever Mozart. Passion marks the reunion of Godard with director of photography Raoul Coutard, who shot many of Godard's films of the 1960s. The cinematography is key to understanding this difficult film in which how an image is shot is as important as what it depicts. Godard and Coutard favor shots that begin as open, disorganized framings and become painterly compositions as the people and things in them move. ~ Louis Schwartz, All Movie Guide

Louis (Gerard Lanvin), an advertising executive in a Paris department store, is not the world's most ambitious man, but he has a good marriage and is content with his job -- until his world is turned upside-down by a new, manipulative, controlling manager (Michel Piccoli) who slowly starts to dominate his life. Once given privileged entry into the inner circle of the boss' confidantes, Louis does everything so as not to lose his advantaged position: he works overtime, he fawns, he fetches, his house is at the manager's disposal. His wife (Nathalie Baye), who sees right through the arrogant manager, is getting fed up with her husband's behavior but is not able to make him aware of the extent of his own personality changes. In a pique of anger, she leaves him -- and it looks as though Louis cannot "unlearn" his lesson, especially when the manager disappears as mysteriously as he came. Michel Piccoli won the "Best Actor" award at the 1982 Berlin Film Festival for his role in this film. The film itself also won the Louis Delluc award for the "Best French Film" of 1981. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Burt Lancaster stars as Lou, an aging mob flunkey, barely making a living in Atlantic City. Susan Sarandon plays Sally, a casino croupier whose husband Dave (Robert Joy) steals a large supply of drugs from the mob. When he is killed, the narcotics pass to the unwilling Sally. Lou, in the midst of longtime affair with middle-aged gangster's widow Grace (Kate Reid), falls for the much younger Sally, becoming her savior by killing the mob thugs sent to shut her up. The killings serve a therapeutic value for Lou, proving that he hasn't lost his old panache. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide