Maurice Risch Movies

The foibles of a group of genial eccentrics scattered through the city of Nantes set the stage for this comedy-drama, taking place during one particular Wednesday. Martin Socoa (Vincent Lindon) is a well-meaning loser juggling more than his share of problems when, after a marathon card game, he remembers it's his day to look after Victoria (Victoria Lafaurie), his daughter from his first failed marriage. It's an especially bad day for Martin to play babysitter; he needs to close an important deal at work, he has a court date involving unpaid alimony, and his girlfriend (Catherine Frot) thinks its time she gave him the boot. Meanwhile, a group of kids discover a three-year-old who has managed to wander away from his parents, and they watch after him for the rest of the day, preferring not to get any grownups involved. Elsewhere, as Chief of Police Pelloutier (Olivier Gourmet) has to deal with unrepentant shoplifter Marie Therese (Armelle), his wife Marie (Anne Le Ny) prepares for a trip out of town related to her position in the Navy, even though she's in the last month of pregnancy. And two pairs of love-struck teenagers each figure out their own ways to slip away from their parents as they set out for a romantic trip on the Loire River. The film's French title, Mercredi, Folle Journee!, roughly translates into English as Wednesday -- Crazy Day!; one unstated plot point that may be lost on audiences outside Europe is that many French schools are traditionally closed on Wednesdays. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This senseless comedy is based on a cartoon-strip character drawn by the late Jean-Marc Reiser and has no real plot to speak of -- it is just a series of ribald, raunchy sketches. The character in question is a man who goes about wearing only one oversized pair of stained underwear, with one testicle visible. That garb aptly describes the level of humor throughout the film. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Following a trend that may have begun with the first Blondie movie in 1938, this is an acted interpretation of a popular comic strip by the acerbic cartoonist Jean-Marc Reiser, who wrote the dialog for Vive Les Femmes but died before shooting was completed. Reiser's comic strip emphasized the lowest common denominator in intimate relationships, where physically flawed examples of both sexes go after each other with unbridled enthusiasm. Roland Giraud plays a womanizer, and Maurice Risch an unhappy loner whose manners will undoubtedly keep him that way, in this disconnected series of uneven skits that play to no unifying theme. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A clever adaptation of Moliere's play Les Fourberies de Scapin, this cinematic re-creation was directed by Roger Coggio who also plays the lead, Scapin -- a tramp who thrives on mischief. In this version, however, Coggio interprets Scapin's antics as clever put-ons, meant to help him obtain his objectives. The story starts out as a stage performance which Coggio then transforms into cinema, as though transforming the story from the "fiction" of play-acting to the "verite" of cinematic realism. That is a neat 20th-century trick that Scapin himself may have appreciated. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In French filmmaker Bertrand Blier's seriocomic Beau Pere, Ariel Besse plays a 14-year-old girl who is perversely attracted to her 30-year-old stepfather (Patrick Dewaere). Daddy fends off these unnatural attentions, but eventually gives in and allows himself to be seduced. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An inventor and a small-time industrialist, Guillaume (Louis De Funes) has come up with something which will take advantage of air pollution and manages to confuse a delegation of Japanese into placing an order for 3,000 of the things. Just a few obstacles stand in the way of his delivering on the order. For one thing, he has no factory in which to make them. He decides to dedicate all the extra space in his house to building them, though perhaps he should have told his wife (Annie Girardot) first, because she seems to have been made unhappy by these developments. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Bonaventure (Pierre Richard) is a semi-competent travel agent who makes up stories about his great romantic adventures to tell to the girls in his office. One evening, he meets a woman who has the same name as one of his made-up romances, and they share a for-real one-night encounter. Afterward, he thinks up a scheme for a unique tour situation in which people might pay for a limited-time visit to a completely undeveloped island where they will be forced to become modern-day Robinson Crusoes. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This French farce depicts Hitler as the sort of man who issues challenges to opposing countries: win a soccer game against us, or be invaded. All goes invasion-ward until the French send three screwy guys to kidnap the tyrant. At this point, things become incredibly bizarre, as the kidnapper's schemes land them on the German team. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Bosquier (Louis De Funes) is the director of a private boarding school in this routine situation comedy. He and his wife (Claude Gesnac) try to run the institution with a tyrannical hand, but the tighter the grip, the more control he loses over the students and the school. Soon he is chasing his wayward son and the daughter of a wealthy British aristocrat when the two run away together. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide