Melvil Poupaud Movies
Observant American moviegoers may recognize the très beau French actor Melvil Poupaud from his role in James Ivory's 2003 romantic comedy Le Divorce -- in which he played the arrogant two-timer Charles-Henri de Persand, who divorced a gorgeous, pregnant American wife (Naomi Watts) whom any man would be a fool to leave. Actually, Poupaud had already sustained a decades-long career in the French film industry before joining the cast of that movie. Christened after Herman Melville by his screenwriter mother, Poupaud launched off into acting in primary school, with a role in La Ville des Pirates (1983), directed by the esteemed Raul Ruiz -- not a bad start for a ten-year-old. Sporting dual passions -- one for music, another for movies -- Poupaud cut his chops as a musician on the drums, then formed the Euro rock band Mud with his brother Yarol Poupaud, while continuing to land movie roles on the side.Poupaud worked under the aegis of A-list French directors such as Jacques Doillon and Eric Rohmer -- typically pure romances or romantic comedies, often typecast as a snotty, slightly conceited jerk. Early parts included the younger brother in Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Lover (1991), the lead role of Gaspard in Rohmer's A Summer's Tale (1996), and several more collaborations with Ruiz, such as that director's 1994 Fado, Major and Minor. Le Divorce represented Poupaud's first international role -- an attempt to rise above his largely continental appeal and renown.
Poupaud subsequently received top billing in François Ozon's 2005 Time to Leave, as a high-profile, gay fashion photographer struggling with inoperable brain cancer. Among other things, the film demonstrated that Poupaud could hold his own alongside Jeanne Moreau. The actor followed this up with a respectable contribution as the romantic lead in Zoe Cassavetes' drama Broken English (2007), opposite American indie darling Parker Posey. The next year, he had a small role as Johnny “Goodboy” Jones in the Wachowski Brothers' elaborate, CGI-infused live-action production of Speed Racer. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- 1995
A troubled young woman goes in search of the father she never knew in this French drama. In 1979, Elisa (Florence Thomassin) is an unhappy and unstable woman who -- after trying to strangle her two year old daughter Marie -- kills herself on Christmas Eve. Sixteen years later, Marie (Vanessa Paradis) has grown into a young woman with more than her share of problems; she's wise beyond her years when it comes to men, and she lies as often as she tells the truth. With her friends Solange (Clotilde Courau) and Ahmed (Sekkou Sall), Marie makes her way through a variety of small-time confidence games, but she's obsessed with discovering the identity of her father, who abandoned her after the death of her mother years before. After intimidating a number of civil service workers, Marie learns that her father is Jacques Desmoulins (Gerard Depardieu), a successful but reclusive songwriter who lives on a small island where he uses alcohol to keep him company. Marie makes her way to Jacques' island in the hope of getting even with the man she blames for many of her troubles. Leading lady Vanessa Paradis is also a successful pop singer in Europe. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vanessa Paradis, Gérard Depardieu, (more)
Murder and double-dealing among the idle rich sets the stage for this drama. Alan Cross (Adrian Dunbar) is a British detective who travels to a wealthy community along the coast of France in 1938; he's there to attend the funeral of a friend and wants to find out more about the mysterious circumstances behind his friend's death. Cross finds a privileged British family who were close to the deceased and who seem to live by their own set of rules. Helena Graves (Joanna Lumley) was good friends with the deceased, but she claims to know nothing about how he died. Helena's daughter Celia (Gabrielle Anwar) is engaged to a hot-blooded American but has also been involved in an incestuous relationship with her brother Jeremy (Stephen Dorff); Jeremy harbors a dark childhood secret regarding the death of his brother, and he is courting a Jewish woman, much to the chagrin of the anti-Semitic Helena. Cross becomes convinced that someone in the Graves family is to blame for the death, but it's not until someone else dies that the truth begins to bubble to the surface. Innocent Lies was also shown under the title Halcyon Days. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stephen Dorff, Gabrielle Anwar, (more)
- 1994
This unique French offering is a compilation of 30 short films focused on AIDS. The mini-films were based on over 3,000 ideas put in by French school children and were made by filmmakers on a voluntary basis. Most of the vignettes deal with heterosexuality and AIDS, but one deals with drug-usage, and one with homosexuality. It took four production houses three years to create this inspirational and informative film. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anémone, Daniel Gélin, (more)
- 1994
The seemingly unrelated scenes in this 110 minute black and white cinematic collage reflect the highly personalized vision of filmmaker Raul Ruiz. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Luc Bideau, Melvil Poupaud, (more)
- 1993
Martine (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) hasn't been quite right in the head since she suffered a romantic reversal several years before, but she had been getting by in the regular world fairly well. However, when her current boyfriend tells her he's leaving, she promptly butts her head into a door so hard that she suffers from amnesia and is placed in a mental ward. There, she devotes her not inconsiderable energy and inventiveness to improving the romantic lives of her fellow patients. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Melvil Poupaud, (more)
The Lover is director Jean-Jacques Annaud's adaptation of Marguerite Duras' minimalist 1984 novel. Set in French Indochina in 1929, the film explores the erotic charge of forbidden love. Jane March plays a French teenager sent to a Saigon boarding school, while Tony Leung is a 32-year Chinese aristocrat. They look at each and they both see a blinding white flash; it's kismet. He offers her a ride in his limousine and soon they meet in his "bachelor room" where they revel in a wide variety of creative sexual encounters. However, they both realize their love is doomed. She comes from a troubled family that includes a mentally-disturbed mother (Frederique Meininger) and drug-addicted brother (Arnaud Giovaninetti). It also appears that her family would not approve of an interracial tryst. But then neither would his family, since in order to inherit his father's wealth, he must not break from a traditional Chinese arranged marriage. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jane March, Tony Leung Kar-Fai, (more)
- 1991
Jonathan (Melvil Poupaud) is an imaginative young man. This film unveils what goes on in his mind as he mulls over his recent reading of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Treasure Island and the television adventure shows he is watching. This story device allows the highly regarded and very innovative Chilean-born director Raul Ruiz to transform Stevenson's classic adventure tale into a much darker and more complex depiction of treachery and hidden identities. Distributors and producers were not entranced by this transformation, and money for completing the film was withheld, so despite its completion date of 1986, this version, which evinces numerous technical and other problems, was not released until 1991. Gaps in the sometimes confusing storyline are dealt with in a voiceover narrative. Ruiz' work has usually met with a warmer reception, but in this case it received a great deal of (possibly well-deserved) ridicule. One high point of the film, however, is when Pedro Armendariz Jr., as Mendoza, recounts the story of Herman Melville's less-well-known novel Benito Cereno. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Melvil Poupaud, Martin Landau, (more)
- 1991
A wealthy woman owns an exclusive private boarding school off the coast of England, where young men are taught in French and English, becoming completely fluent. In general, the school is exactly what it purports to be, but the owner selects some of her young scholarship students for special educational opportunities. In short, she carefully prepares them for initiation into sexuality, which generally pleases them as much as it does her. This summer, one of the scholarship students stays behind and, with the collusion of the school's skeleton staff, begins his extracurricular education with the dissolute headmistress. However, this year, the boy she has chosen has some philosophical qualms which must be addressed even if it endangers her life, and his. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michel Piccoli, Claire Nebout, (more)
- 1989
Wise beyond her 15 years, Juliette (Judith Godreche) has developed a curious modus operandi in matters of the heart. She goes out of her way to befriend older men, sleeps with each of her conquests but once, then moves on. Director Jacques Doillon plays the father of Juliette's latest beau; the boy's father hopes to break the girl's love-em-and-leave-em pattern by bedding her himself. In addition to acting and directing in La Fille de Quinze Ans, Doillon also wrote the screenplay and co-produced. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Judith Godrëche, Melvil Poupaud, (more)
- 1986
In this perplexing experimental film, two people are having a lengthy, surreptitious discussion about doing something nasty to a third party. Louise (Anne Alvara) and Leonard (Jean-Claude Wino) are the plotting couple, but is the third party Louise's brother? Is that brother Leonard? Why is that mirror hanging on the wall? Many questions are brought to the surface in this film, but few are answered. As the psychological dominance switches from Louise to Leonard, the film switches from color to black and white. Finally, the couple opens the door and a wind blows through, color returns, and Louise is now a housewife chastising either her son or brother (Melvil Popard) about his writing; and the enigma continues. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Melvil Poupaud, Jean-Claude Wino, (more)
- 1985
This quickly-filmed avant-garde farce by prolific director Raul Ruiz features an insomniac (Michel Lonsdale) whose main preoccupation is surreptitiously watching private matters -- he is a voyeur. He and an equally disreputable acquaintance rape a woman alongside the Seine, a crime made all the worse because she is pregnant. The rest of this slow-paced film deals with the consequences of that action. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michel Lonsdale, Jean-Bernard Guillard, (more)
- 1983
Lacking any visible plot, Ville des Pirates meanders from episodes that are alternately comic or dramatic, gross or non-sequitur, capricious or outrageous, all in the name of a murder mystery. A hard sell to anyone who is not a student of the avant-garde or the history of cinema, most audiences will want to focus more on their popcorn than the screen in this inscrutable cinematic offering from prolific, exiled Chilean director Raul Ruiz. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hugues Quester, Anne Alvaro, (more)
