Jean-Louis Roux Movies
A middle-class teenage misfit living in '70s era Montreal dreams of abandoning his familiar hometown surroundings to seek a brighter future in director Jean-Marc Vallée's character-driven drama. A sexually-confused Christmas Day baby who likes to march to the beat of his own drummer, Zachary Beaulieu (Marc-André Grondin) nevertheless longs to live up to his old-fashioned father's (Michel Cote) decidedly more traditional expectations. As Zachary seeks solace in the sounds of Pink Floyd and David Bowie, his mother assures him that he's bound for greater things and testosterone-fueled siblings raise hell around the house. Despite feeling bound by his comparatively normal surroundings, the revelations provided by David Bowie's "Space Oddity" allows the disheartened Zachary the luxury of dreaming. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michel Cote, Marc-André Grondin, (more)
A priest finds his faith tested when he's assigned to investigate a possible case of divine intervention. Rev. Frank Shore (Ed Harris) is a Catholic priest who works as a postulator, a church official who investigates reports of holy miracles to determine their veracity. Some time back, one of Shore's investigations had ugly repercussions, and now he devotes his time to running a soup kitchen. But he's called back to service by Bishop Cahill (Charles Haid) when a number of Catholics begin calling for the canonization of the late Helen O'Regan, who is alleged to have performed miracles and whose statue is said to weep tears of blood. Shore begins digging into O'Regan's life and the miracles she is supposed to have performed; in his travels, he meets Maria (Caterina Scorsone), a teenage girl who was supposedly healed by O'Regan, and Roxane (Anne Heche), O'Regan's daughter, who was abandoned by her mother, wants nothing to do with her story, and has given up her belief in God. While investigating the miracle of O'Regan's statue, Shore witnesses the bleeding himself and tells the church that he believes the claims are legitimate. However, this view leads to angry reprisals from Archbishop Werner (Armin Mueller-Stahl); Shore's story is not given any greater credence when he become romantically involved with Roxanne. The Third Miracle was released only a few months after Stigmata, another story of Catholic priests investigating allegations of a modern-day miracle, not the sort of subject one might have expected to become a trend. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ed Harris, Anne Heche, (more)
The illicit love-lives of high-ranking judicial figures and the government who will do anything to uphold their stalwart images provide the basis of this French Canadian thriller. The trouble begins when high-priced hooker Gabrielle Angers is raided by the police while she and an appellate court judge are engaging in a little S&M. Both are arrested and one of the judge's colleagues is assigned to try the case. He is the ultra straight-arrow magistrate Jacques Savard. Savard is not pleased with the assignment, and when Angers hands him a damning blacklist containing the names of other prominent clients, he becomes even more upset. Those upon the list begin pressuring him to keep it under wraps. Angers and her lawyer also have a few mighty interesting video tapes of she and her powerful clientele engaging in explicit carnal encounters. She and the lawyer were planning to use the tapes to extort them. Unfortunately things go horribly awry and the lawyer is found brutally murdered. Obviously one of those upon the list is responsible for trying to undermine the case and is slowly murdering all those involved, but which man is it? ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michel Cote, Genevieve Brouillette, (more)
A woman looks for her lost son in this Canadian-French melodrama set in Quebec city. Marie-Alexandrine (nicknamed Max) has not been in this city for over 25 years. Max burst into the home of her former best friend and classmate at the Conservatoire de Musique, Catherine Mercier, a renowned concert pianist. The two are opposites. Max was the rebellious one, and Catherine the quiet one. They begin reminiscing and the film flashes back to their youth when both were 15 and had budding musical careers. Max's career is nipped when she tells her strong-willed mother that she is pregnant. Her mother forces Max to give her son up for adoption. Enraged, Max throws her life to the winds and runs away. Back in the present, she has returned to find her son. Catherine assists her. Denis, a garage mechanic who is searching for his mother who abandoned him when he was a baby assists them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Geneviève Bujold, Marthe Keller, (more)
When a group of children around the age of twelve decide they want some extra money for the summer holidays, they get together under the leadership Charles, who is used to getting his way, and start a house-cleaning company. At the same time another classmate has set up a video advertising company and is making an ad for the cleaners. Despite their hard work and good intentions, it takes more to run a business than a desire to make money and a good idea, as these youngsters learn as each participant's willfulness leads the enterprise astray in some fashion. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
Salut Victor! is the story of two gay men of a certain age. Victor, the title character, is outgoing and affable. Philipe is timid and withdrawn. Victor enables Philipe to come out of his shell and enjoy life-even within the limits imposed by "straight" society. Charming in its own offbeat way, Salut Victor! is generally available in French with English subtitles. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Louis Roux, Jacques Godin, (more)
Set in a small Quebec town in the late '20s, this moving drama follows the life and exploits of Celeste Beaumont, a talented young pianist, who gains local celebrity at the town movie theater for her gifts as a silent film accompanist. As an added attraction, Celeste dons ornate gowns for each performance. Audiences are just as interested in her ever-changing apparel as they are in the film. Awkward Pierre Blaudell is her biggest fan and eventually convinces Celeste to be his wife. Shortly after she bears his son, Pierre joins the army. She insists on joining him at the base and his meddlesome, snooty parents insist she give them her son. After Pierre is killed in battle, Celeste flees to New York where she finds steady employment as a jazz pianist. She finds a life-long companion with a black musician and chronicles her experiences in a diary that she passes on to her son after he grows up. He becomes a painter and once his own son is grown, reads him the story of Celeste, the youth's grandmother. Intrigued, the young man heads to the Big Apple in hopes of finding her. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Monique Spaziani, Gabriel Arcand, (more)
This macabre, whimsical, erotic, dark, seriocomic film is a complex tale about an eccentric family and the psychological and emotional maelstroms that follow them around from New England to New York to Vienna, where the Hotel New Hampshire is located. Writer-director Tony Richardson worked from the convoluted novel by John Irving that covers most universally saleable topics -- homosexuality, death, incest, abandonment, Nazis, masochism, terrorists, rape, mental instability, and anarchists. The children in the family are the main focus: John (Rob Lowe) is a womanizing high-school student with a deep-rooted desire for his own sister; Franny (Jodie Foster) is the eldest daughter, a victim of a gang rape, now morbidly fascinated by one of the rapists, and equally attracted to her brother with incestuous desire; Frank (Paul McCrane) is the younger gay brother; and Lilly (Jennifer Dundas) is the little sister who blossoms into a famous author. Associated with the family is Suzie the Bear (Nastassja Kinski) who is not secure enough to come out of her bear suit. One friend of the family, Freud (Wallace Shawn), has been blinded by the Nazis and is running the Hotel New Hampshire in Vienna when he asks everyone to come and help him out. By this time, the plot has run out of room, and the climactic endings to several unresolved relationships happen in quick succession. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jodie Foster, Beau Bridges, (more)
A potentially moving story about a Cambodian orphan and his quest to return home is trivialized by overacting and exaggeration in this fantasy tale meant for family fare. Toby (Jonathan Starr) and Liz (Anick) live with their aunt and uncle in bucolic happiness, and one day a Cambodian orphan adopted by the aunt and uncle joins the family. Han (Ky Huot-uk) has a dream of returning home (the murderous Khmer Rouge are not mentioned). So when the youngsters come across the eccentric King of Peru (Mickey Rooney) and his magic locomotive, Han gets the idea of jumping on board and riding it back to Cambodia. The intended poignancy of his wish is unfortunately lost among the weak story, cutesy children, and a caricatured interpretation by Mickey Rooney. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Starr, (more)
This Canadian tragedy centers around the controversial 1899 murder trial of Cordelia Viau and her retarded handyman, Samuel Parslow, with whom she had an affair. The case was so sensational because it represents the first time in which a conviction was based on purely circumstantial evidence. Despite the fact that both parties had strong alibis, and the evidence was contradictory, the jury still found them guilty of murdering her husband. The reason they were hung had more to do with the public's moral outrage at their well-publicized affair. People from all over the world attended their double hanging. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Louise Portal, Gaston Lepage, (more)
When she is raped by her uncle, a teenaged girl flees her small-town home in Quebec for the anonymity of Montreal. There, she gives birth to a boy whose parentage, when he grows old enough to be curious, she keeps to herself. Instead, she says that his father was a poet friend of hers who died in an auto accident. Meanwhile she moves from working as a bank clerk, to working as a convention hostess. As he grows older, the lad comes to doubt her story, and eventually the truth is unveiled. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lise Thouin, Jean-Louis Roux, (more)
This drama examines the tensions felt between French and English speaking Canadians after WW I as it tells the story of a town squire interested in promoting industry in his village. Unfortunately, his son betrays him and with the help of another, he reveals his father's true, antireligious motives. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Pierre Aumont, Stacy Keach, (more)
Featuring a deft blend of sci-fi, horror and suspense, this Canadian thriller centers on a Montreal police detective's attempts to solve the strange and grisly murder of a young woman. His investigation leads him into a mysterious terrifying world of Satanic ritual. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide















