Béatrice Romand Movies
- 2005
Eric Rohmer is one of the best-respected filmmakers in the history of the French cinema, as well as among the most elusive. Notoriously reluctant to talk about his own work, Rohmer rarely sits for filmed interviews, but documentary filmmaker Marie Binet has taken another route to gain a perspective on the director's working methods in this feature. Les Contes Secrets ou les Rohmeriens features interviews with 16 actors who have appeared in Rohmer's films, and they talk on camera about his unusual working methods, his personality, and his spare but evocative signature style. Among the thespians who share their memories are Jean-Louis Trinitignant, Marie-Christine Barrault, Zouzou, Jean-Claude Brialy, Béatrice Romand, Françoise Fabian, and Andre Dussolier; the film also includes rare footage of Rohmer himself at work on the set of his 1978 effort Perceval. Les Contes Secrets ou les Rohmeriens received its North American premiere at the 2005 New Montreal Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Féodor Atkine, Marie-Christine Barrault, (more)
- 1998
- PG
The final installment in Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons quartet of films examines matchmaking among the middle-aged and romance in the Rhone Valley. The target of the matchmakers is widowed vintner Magali (Béatrice Romand), alone at her vineyard after the departure of her grown children. Her best friend (Marie Rivière) plots to pair her with a friendly businessman (Alain Libolt), while her son's girlfriend (Alexia Portal) schemes to introduce her to a high-school philosophy teacher. Rohmer's film was shown at the 1998 Venice Film Festival, the 1998 Telluride Film Festival, the 1998 Toronto Film Festival, and the 1998 New York Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marie Rivière, Béatrice Romand, (more)
- 1987
This episodic film comes from French director Eric Rohmer and is the seventh and final installment in the filmmaker's Comedies and Proverbs cycle. Reinette (Joëlle Miquel) is as innocent as a newborn babe, while Mirabelle (Jessica Forde) is as worldly and sophisticated as Reinette is not. Their country mouse/city mouse friendship begins when they share a room in Paris and endures through a quartet of whimsical experiences. Completed in 1987, Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle was distributed in the U.S. in 1989. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Philippe Laudenbach, Joëlle Miquel, (more)
Summer (Le Rayon Vert) is the fifth of French director Eric Rohmer's "Comedies et Proverbes" movie cycle. Left out of everyone's Summer vacation plans, unhappy Parisian student Marie Riviere (Rohmer's star in all of the "Comedies et Proverbes") accepts an invitation to stay at her friend's empty apartment in Biarritz. Swedish tourist Carita tries to snap Riviere out of her bad mood, but the two ladies are polar opposites in terms of relating to the opposite sex. Carita will take it any way she can, while Riviere holds out for true romance. A mystical assignation tied in with the old Jules Verne novel Le Rayon Vert (The Green Ray) brings Riviere in contact with the man of her dreams (Vincent Gauthier). An international award winner, Summer was surprisingly overlooked in France, where director Rohmer was (in the 1980s at least) somewhat taken for granted. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marie Rivière, Rosette, (more)
- 1984
This anthology is comprised of six vignettes made by different Noveau Vague filmmakers. Each short film centers on a different aspect of Parisian life. The films and their directors include: J'ai Faim, J'ai Froid by Chantal Akerman; Place Clichy by Bernard Dubois; Rue Fontaine by Philippe Garrel; Rue Du Bac by Frederic Mitterand; Paris Plage by Vincent Nordon, and Canal Saint-Martin by Philippe Vernault. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maria de Medeiros, Pascale Salkin, (more)
- 1983
Director Carlo Lizzani left behind his typically political interests in favor of pure sex and violence in this convoluted thriller. A married woman selling the title carpet, which a Persian legend holds to be yellow only to highlight the color of blood, is visited by an older man while her husband is out. What follows is a labyrinthine tangle of incestuous urges, poisonings, psychosexual sadism, drug abuse, and torture. Despite having been filmed for television, this bizarre film -- based on a play by Aldo Selleri -- is quite graphic. Perverse sexual situations and knifepoint torture abound, while at one point a syringe is stabbed into an eyelid in close-up. Erland Josephson, Beatrice Romand, Vittorio Mezzogiorno, and Milena Vukotic lead the talented cast. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Béatrice Romand, Erland Josephson, (more)
Le Beau Marriage, aka The Perfect Marriage, is the second of Eric Rohmer's "Comedies et Proverbes". Beatrice Romand (the adolescent star of Rohmer's Claire's Knee, now nicely grown up) impulsively decides that Andre Dussolier-whom she barely knows--would make an ideal husband. Now she must convince him that she'll make an ideal wife. Leaving her old boy friend in the dust, Romand launches her single-purposed pursuit of Dussolier. But because she's jumped in and started swimming without first checking the waters, our headstrong heroine is in for a major disappointment. Even after she's down, however, Romand refuses to be counted out. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Béatrice Romand, André Dussollier, (more)
- 1977
A self-centered and lazy young man, consumed by sexual fantasies and schemes, is forced to marry when his mistress becomes pregnant. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Julien Negulesco, Anicée Alvina, (more)
- 1975
- R
Peter Sellers stays busy in this comedy playing Hitler, Prince Kyoto, and four others in this tale of an anti-Nazi French whorehouse which supports the Allied war effort by exterminating the most dangerous of its patrons in the bedroom. Highlights include Lila Kedrova as the madame who becomes a general in the resistance, and Curt Jurgens as Gen. Von. Grotjahn, Sellers' nemesis. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lila Kedrova, Curd Jürgens, (more)
- 1975
Tom Stoppard and Thomas Wiseman's intricate script for The Romantic Englishwoman credibly explores the notion that a writer can manipulate the people in his life as deftly as he can manipulate the characters in his imagination. The title character Elizabeth, played by Glenda Jackson, is the wife of Lewis (Michael Caine), a novelist. At this point in his life, Lewis thinks in nothing but literary terms: Elizabeth is vacationing in Europe alone, ergo she must be having an affair. Half out of frustration, she confirms her husband's suspicions by romancing German drug dealer Thomas (Helmut Berger). Things get even dicier when Lewis invites Thomas into his home, requesting his technical advice on a screenplay he is working on. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Glenda Jackson, Michael Caine, (more)
- 1973
This extraordinary romp uses no language whatever, except gestures and grunts. When a salt crystal is dropped into a solution of water that contains all the salt it can handle, something extraordinary happens: the swift formation of large crystals of salt from the apparently clear water. When Thesroc (Michel Piccoli) rebels against the dull conformity of his life with flamboyant anarchistic splendor, the whole world quickly goes howling mad. His day starts, as usual, when his mother more-or-less drags him out of bed and kicks him out the door to go to his factory job, which supports them all. At the factory, when he is called onto the carpet, he quits (but not before fondling the boss's secretary). Back at home, he makes love to his sister and then transforms the family's apartment into a more primitive abode. The conditions of the stone-age quickly return. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michel Piccoli, Béatrice Romand, (more)
- 1972
French director Claude Berri wrote, directed, and stars in this comedy as Claude, a bookstore owner whose personal life, like his struggling business, is failing. Claude is trapped in a loveless marriage to Isabelle (Juliet Berto), who does not seem to possess any sexual attraction to her husband or affection for her children. The only activity Isabelle does seem to relish is shopping, which means spending Claude's hard-earned income. Then salvation arrives in the form of a business brainstorm. Claude transforms the bookstore into a sex shop, selling everything from leather bondage paraphernalia to pornography; soon business takes off. The proprietorship of the sex shop and his friendship with a sexually uninhibited customer, Jacqueline (Nathalie Delon), open up new possibilities for Claude, and he realizes that he's been repressed. Although he encourages Isabelle to join him in his new erotic adventures, she is at first reluctant to embrace the swinging lifestyle; the couple's attempts at a ménage à trois are disastrous. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Pierre Marielle, Claude Piéplu, (more)
Eric Rohmer ends his cycle of "Six Moral Tales" with this delightful film starring Bernard Verley as Frederic, a happily married man who discovers that he can't stop looking at beautiful women. As he says in a voiceover, "I feel marriage closes me in, cloisters me, and I want to escape." His escape comes to him in the form of Chloe (Zouzou), a woman from his past. Chloe had left for America as a successful model but has now returned to Paris, bored with her life and saddled with a man she doesn't love. Although Frederic is reluctant to see her at first, they agree to meet in the afternoons -- just to talk. He feels a freedom with her that he doesn't experience with anyone else because they have, he thinks, no commitments to each other. So, they talk of their problems and their relationships and, before long, Frederic finds that he is becoming increasingly attracted to her. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bernard Verley, Zouzou, (more)
- 1970
- PG
The fifth of Eric Rohmer's "Six Moral Tales," Claire's Knee is a deliciously Rohmeresque story of sexual obsession. French diplomat Jerome (Jean-Claude Brialy), on a resort vacation, meets Claire (Laurence De Monaghan), the teen-aged daughter of a friend. Though engaged to be married, Jerome falls hopelessly in love -- not with Claire, but with Claire's knee. Realizing that to be revealed as a fetishist would be ruinous for him, Jerome does not act upon his obsession. Eventually he gets to fulfill his yearnings by placing his hand upon Claire's knee, a gesture which she assumes is out of sympathy for a personal crisis she is going through. Originally released as Le Genou de Claire, this film was the recipient of the Prix Louis Delluc and the Prix Melies. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Claude Brialy, Aurora Cornu, (more)
