Frederic Pierrot Movies

The quiet agony of a mother whose daughter grows up to pursue her own life is chronicled in this realistically presented French drama. The Circuit Carole of the title refers to a motorbike racetrack. Jeanne and her 20-year old daughter Marie share a small apartment in a working-class Parisian neighborhood; the two live harmoniously, but the daughter is restless and anxious to set out on her own. Marie then takes a job in a northern suburb and their lives are forever changed. The racetrack is near her work; Marie is enthralled by the racers and their fast machines. Along with her new boyfriend, a racer, Marie begins riding herself. She then moves out of her mother's flat, leaving Jeanne bereft of companionship and a purpose in her life. Her silent, deeply internalized grief eventually drives her completely mad. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

For Ever Mozart is an episodic film that follows a theater troupe from France attempting to put on a play in Sarajevo. Along their journey they are captured and held in a POW camp, and they call for help from their friends and relations in France. Director Jean-Luc Godard presents stories about this troop to ask how one can make art while slaughters like the one in Bosnia are taking place, and he throws in a strong critique of the European Union. For Ever Mozart is one of Godard's most disjointed and difficult films. Its stories sometimes seem to form a whole and at other times the links among them are unclear. One gets the impression that in each episode Godard attempts to start a film only to come to the conclusion that it is impossible to continue. It features some of the most beautiful shots of tanks in the cinema. ~ Louis Schwartz, All Movie Guide

American independent filmmaker Rob Tregenza, who includes Jean-Luc Godard among his admirers, directed this deliberately paced, minimalist drama about Jean Hammett (Frederic Pierrot), a French artist who has been committed to a mental institution in the United States. One of the female inmates becomes infatuated with him as the patients react with the nuns who run the hospital and attempt to interact despite the emotional distance between them. Tregenza, who also wrote, produced, and photographed Inside/Out, shot the film in the widescreen CinemaScope format to better visually illustrate the separation of the characters. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A doctor learns some things he never expected to know as he searches for a friend on a mission of mercy in this drama. Pierre Feldman (Jean-Yves Dubois) is a French physician who visits the African nation of Port Djema in hopes of finding a close friend and colleague. Port Djema is being torn apart by a bloody civil war, and Pierre's friend, a fellow doctor, went there as a medical volunteer. He's since disappeared, and Pierre hopes to track down his friend and a child under his care. As Pierre is plunged deeper into the nation's civil unrest, he becomes acquainted with Alice (Nathalie Boutefeu), a cab driver who serves as Pierre's guide and appears to have known his friend; and Jerome (Christophe Odent), a French official in Port Djema who seems to know more than he's willing to tell about the fate of a number of French citizens. Port Djema earned a Silver Bear for director Eric Heumann at the 1997 Berlin International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Sex, avant-garde art, and Communist ideology are at the heart of this compelling historical drama. The film opens just as the Soviet Empire crumbles in 1989. As Louise (Brigitte Catillon) mourns the death of her lover, she discovers the journal of Alfred Katz (Gregoire Colin), an earnest Jewish radical and erstwhile poet who disappeared in 1938. With the aid of a history professor, Louise unravels what happened to Katz. In the feverish climate of pre-WWII Paris, Katz reveals himself as both a fervent Trotskyite and an unabashed romantic. At a party thrown by the noted surrealist Andre Breton, he meets Mila (Anouk Grinberg), a beautiful part-time model, part-time whore. As soon as he falls for her, he learns of her other lover Felix (Xavier Beauvois), a fervent Stalinist. Bored with politics, Mila eventually marries Katz. Soon betrayal and politics catch up with the poet. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Renowned actress Maria de Medeiros directs this sweeping historical drama set in Portugal about the heady days leading up to April 25, 1974, when that country was finally freed from 40 years of Fascist rule. The film opens with a series of grisly black and white photographs of Portuguese war atrocities committed against its colonies -- Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. Antonia (de Medeiros) is a teacher who begs her minister-brother to release a couple of her students from the clutches of the secret police. As a result, she herself gets captured, interrogated, and tortured. At the same time, a young couple bid a tearful adieu at the train station just as the man, Capt. Maia (Stefano Accorsi) is drafted to fight in the colonies. Just before the youth gets shipped off to Africa, he manages to persuade the soldiers of a remote army outpost to rebel. Along with his buddies Lobao (Fele Martinez) and Antonia's ex-husband Manuel (Frederic Pierrot), Maia manages to storm a radio station and ultimately besiege the national guard barracks, which houses the president and military advisors. This film was screened at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Directed by Guillaume Nicloux, Cette Femme-La (That Woman) follows divorced police captain Michele Varin (Josiane Balasko), whose grief comes to a head with the swiftly approaching anniversary of her young son's death. Alone except for her late son's sick rabbit, Michele is dealing with crippling insomnia, and what little sleep she does get is marred by nightmares. Meanwhile, along with her co-worker Sylvain (Eric Caravaca), Michele tries to solve a strange suicide case, and meets several mysterious people along the way: a private investigator (Thierry Lhermitte), a strange young boy who lives near the suicide location, and Daniel (Frederic Pierrot), a lumber yard worker. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

Arnaud Viard's 2003 French-language feature Clara et Moi chronicles the eccentric romance between the 33-year-old struggling actor Antoine (Julien Boisselier of Le Convoyeur) and Clara (Julie Gayet Les Menteurs), a girl he happens to meet on the subway. Clara happens along at exactly the right time for Antoine, who - worn out from celibacy - has just avowed to his analyst that he'll find a wife within a set period. All is heaven at first, almost farcically so (and Viard, well aware of this, even defies the audience's formic expectations by playfully interjecting a musical number into the middle of the movie, in which the lovers "sing" their feelings to one another, ala Demy). But suddenly, a dark and unexpected twist emerges in the relationship, that strips bare Antoine's emotional immaturity and thus threatens to bring everything crashing down. Michel Aumont co-stars. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Bruno (Grégoire Colin of Beau Travail) is a troubled art student fascinated with pristine white walls and empty space. A squalid, unhappy childhood has left him angry, reclusive, and obsessive. When his brutish uncle (Etienne Chicot), fed up with Bruno's eccentricities, threatens to kick him out, Bruno calmly murders him. Elise (Julie Ordon) is several years younger than Bruno, just entering adulthood. Her mother was murdered when Elise was a little girl, and Anne (Brigitte Catillon), the psychiatrist who used hypnosis to try to draw out her memory of the event, is now married to Elise's father, Richard (Laurent Grévill). Anne still worries that the mysterious man who murdered Elise's mother will return to harm Elise. She's overprotective to the point of paranoia, and Elise grows increasingly weary of her stepmother's constant meddling. When Bruno gets an interior design job at the upscale shoe store where Elise works, they are immediately drawn to each other. While Elise is quietly determined to draw out the odd, shy young man, Bruno seems to see Elise as some kind of ideal objet d'art. Anne, ever suspicious, suspects that Bruno is up to no good, and tries to keep Elise from seeing him. As Bruno plots to make Elise his, the twisted truth about her mother's murder is revealed. Inquiétudes, based on the novel A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell, was written and directed by Gilles Bourdos. It was shown at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Rendezvous With French Cinema in 2004. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

The recently dead return to life in They Came Back, but they are surprisingly uninterested in feasting on the living. Many of them are, naturally enough, elderly, and they seem content merely to go back to their former lives, but their return causes a myriad of complications. Robin Campillo, making his feature directorial debut, co-wrote the script to Laurent Cantet's Time Out, and his "zombie" movie quietly examines the individual and societal impact the dead have on the small French city -- just one of many similarly afflicted throughout the world -- to which they return. Isham (Djemel Barek) and Véronique (Marie Matheron) have their trepidations, but they're generally happy, at first, to see their little boy Sylvain (Saady Delas), and the town's elderly mayor (Victor Garrivier) welcomes home his wife, Martha (Catherine Samie). But Rachel (Géraldine Pailhas of 5x2), a government health official, cannot bring herself to visit her newly returned husband, Mathieu (Jonathan Zaccaï of Seaside), at the ad-hoc shelter where the government houses the "zombies" like refugees. Eventually, she relents, and Mathieu returns home, but the living find that their loved ones are not exactly as they remember them. Studies soon reveal that the dead suffer from a form of aphasia. They cannot create new memories, and they cannot be trusted to perform any but the most menial tasks. Perhaps sensing the discomfort they cause the living, the dead gather together at night, and seem to be formulating some kind of secret plan. They Came Back was selected by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center for inclusion in the 2005 edition of New Directors/New Films. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide