Alain Rimoux Movies
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
- Starring:
- Michel Piccoli, Alexandre Arbatt, (more)
- 1986
Memoire des Apparences is a highly unconventional, metafictional adaptation of Calderon de la Barca's play Life is a Dream. Director Raul Ruiz combines the 17th-century Spanish drama, about a man raised in a prison who discovers he is his country's rightful prince, with a modern-day story of Chilean political intrigue. During the violent, anti-Allende coup of the early 1970s, literature professor Ignaccio Vega is entrusted with memorizing a list of 15,000 resistance members. He does so, using the Calderon play -- which he had learned as a youth -- as a mnemonic device. Ten years later, he is asked to reconstruct the list. Frustrated at his initial inability to recall the play (and therefore the list), he seeks refuge in a movie theater. The film then proceeds to mix three different levels of reality: Vega's actual life, the films he watches, and the Calderon play he slowly remembers. As the deadline nears, these worlds begin to overlap, and Vega realizes all may not be as it seems. Ruiz juggles realities with his usual aplomb, handling serious political and theoretical subjects with a dry, surrealist wit and mixing a seriousness of purpose with playfully experimental film techniques. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Roch Leibovici
- 1988
This documentary by three different directors chronicles their two-week journey aboard a commercial icebreaker on the Bothnian Sea. The first episode is by French director Jean Rouch and has the title "Bateau-Givre," or "Frosted Boat." It focuses on the beauty of the ocean and the ship itself. Swedish director Titte Tornroth's "Hans Majestat Isbrytaren Frej" focuses more on the human element, while the eccentric Chilean-French director Raul Ruiz has constructed a first-person science-fiction narrative titled "Histoire de Glace." ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
Edmond Rostand's classic drama of inner and outer beauty is given a lavish treatment in this acclaimed French production. Gérard Depardieu portrays the title character, a brilliant, charismatic swordsman with a generous spirit and a genius for poetry. It would seem that such a man would have no trouble attracting women, but Cyrano considers himself doomed to loneliness by an unattractive face featuring an oversized nose. His feelings of inadequacy are emphasized when Roxane, the beautiful woman he adores, attracts the attention of Christian, a young cadet in Cyrano's service. Christian lacks the poetic gift, however, and he ironically turns to Cyrano for help in winning Roxane's love. What follows is a tale of deception, with Roxane falling in love with the ineloquent Christian thanks to Cyrano's words of love. The underlying narrative has become quite familiar to modern audiences through retellings and variations from the 1950 adaptation starring José Ferrer to Steve Martin's Roxanne. Director Jean-Paul Rappeneau's interpretation stresses the tragic majesty of the original, setting a vigorous performance by Depardieu against a beautifully designed reproduction of the period and an emphasis on the sound and poetry of Rostand's original language; the subtitles for the film's English release were penned by renowned British author Anthony Burgess. This attention to detail creates a particularly faithful cinematic rendering of the original work that met with positive critical responses. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gérard Depardieu, Anne Brochet, (more)
- 2000
Robert (Andre Dussolier) is a stylish and neurotic 50-year-old with an insatiable appetite for women. One day, he reluctantly accompanies his sister to the hospital where her friend Claire (Emmanuelle Devos) has just given birth. Claire is an old flame of Robert's, and the combined impact of seeing her again and the fact that she has used his name for one of her babies makes Robert realize he is still in love with her. As Claire already has a new partner, the father of her child, Robert is particularly shocked and horrified by this discovery. At a bistro later that same day, he gets a second shock in the form of Marie-Pierre (Helene Fillieres, the sister of the film's director, Sophie Fillieres), a young waitress he's chatting up. In the course of their flirtation, Marie-Pierre makes Robert an offer: she will fall in love with him and conduct a full-blown love affair. This makes Robert feel pretty good, so he accepts, but soon enough he discovers that Marie-Pierre, who is nicknamed Aie (French for "ouch") is a bit of a twisted sister. Prone to vomiting up everything she eats and brushing her teeth compulsively with airline toothbrushes given to her by her pilot father, Marie-Pierre gives Robert's brain pause for thought even as his hormones are stampeding blindly ahead. But before he can break off his involvement with her, Robert decides to pay a visit to Claire's apartment, where he finds Marie-Pierre, and the two end up hiding in a closet together and resuming their affair. On a subsequent visit to her parents' house, Marie-Pierre shares some even more bizarre details about her already off-kilter personal history. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- André Dussollier, Hélène Fillières, (more)
- 2002
Directed by Noah Nuer, Cavalcades follows a rebellious young woman and her anxious homosexual friend as they encourage one another to leave their hang-ups in the past. Taking place over a period of days, Anne (Agnes Roland) is flustered over several failed university exams, while Didier (Maxime Desmons) is distraught over his mentally unsound mother's looming apartment move. The two Parisians meet via bicycle collision, and quickly find themselves friends. The topic amongst them is confronting the ways their respective familial expectations have damaged them, and attempting to resolve these issues as if death was only 20 minutes away. Cavalcades also features Josy Bernard, Julian Lambroschini, Christian Sinniger, Chantal Bronner, Alain Rimoux, and Blanche Raynal.
~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Agnes Roland, Maxime Desmons, (more)
In 1954, one of the most notorious erotic novels of the 20th century was published -- The Story of O by Pauline Reage, which chronicled in breathless detail the intense sadomasochistic relationship between a submissive woman and a dominant man. For many years, many believed that Pauline Reage was a pseudonym for a male author, but as it turns out that was only half true. In 1994, journalist John de St. Jorre, while researching a book on Olympia Press (the fearless French publisher who first published the book) learned that Pauline Reage was in fact Dominique Aury, a well-respected and outwardly straight-laced editor for one of Europe's most prestigious publishing houses, Gallimard, who wrote the salacious volume for her lover, another powerful editor at Gallimard, Jean Paulhan. American filmmaker Pola Rapaport, who was powerfully effected by reading The Story of O, traveled to Paris to meet and interview Aury a few years before her death, and Writer of O is a documentary which blends the story of Aury's remarkable life and times with re-creations of scenes from her best-known work. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Catherine Mouchet, Penelope Puymirat, (more)
