Liliane Rovere Movies

Three couples wrestle with temptation and fidelity in this tart romantic comedy from France. Anne (Karin Viard) is a producer at a local television station in Lyons; she's edging into her forties and is wound a bit tighter than she needs to be. As Anne struggles to get ahead at work, she finds herself growing tired of her husband Thomas (Sam Karmann, who also directed the film), a laid-back academic. Before she met Thomas, Anne was married to Marc (Francois Cluzet), a workaholic real estate man who left her to wed younger and prettier Caroline (Julie Delarme). But now that Caroline is pregnant with his child, Marc finds he's not as attracted to her, and begins having disloyal thoughts about other women. And Vincent (Andre Dussollier) is a successful writer who is involved with a man who is young and handsome; however, Vincent's lover doesn't always trust him, and is convinced Vincent will be playing the field when he goes out on a promotion tour for his next book and researches a biography of once-famous jazz singer Pauline Anderton (Ginette Bellue). True Enough (aka La Verite ou Presque) was based on a novel by author Stephen McCauley. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

With a loving, stable marriage of many years, a devoted son named Oscar (Lancelot Roch) and a quiet life in suburban France, life feels supremely happy for French couple Julien (Vincent Lindon) and Lisa (Diane Kruger). The household is shaken to its core, then, when an unthinkable series of events befalls the family: the police suddenly turn up and inexplicably arrest Lisa for a murder of which she appears to have no knowledge. She receives a sentence of twenty years in prison, but Julien remains convinced of her innocence - and unwilling to endure the time it will take to sort through French bureaucracy and obtain an appeal. Reeling in turmoil, Julien grows so distraught that he resorts to a desperate plan of action by deciding to spring Lisa from confinement. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

A talented trompe l'oeil artist finds her dedication to her slacker husband slipping until the aimless but amiable spouse develops an invention that could lead bring the pair fame and fortune in writer/director Michel Leclerc's breezy romantic comedy. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

French filmmaker Sam Karmann directs the crime drama A La Petite Semaine (Nickel and Dime), co-written with actual ex-con Desir Carre. When fiftysomething Jacques (Gerard Lanvin) gets released after serving five years in prison, he goes right to his local hangout and reunites with his old hoodlum friends in a working-class section of Montmarte. His friend Francis (Jacques Gamblin) has been taking acting classes, living with his mother (Liliane Rovere), and dating the waitress Camille (Julie Durand). His other friend, small-time crook Didier (Clovis Cornillac),has been gambling a lot, event though he and his wife Josiane (Sarah Haxaire) are expecting a baby. To the dismay of head criminal Marcel (Etienne Chicot), Jacques doesn't want to continue with a life of crime. A La Petite Semaine also stars Philippe Nahon as the bartender. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

During the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, the nation's movie studios continued to operate; some filmmakers and technicians simply went along with what their new leaders demanded in hopes keeping themselves and their families safe, while others sought to subvert the messages of their captors through their work. Safe Conduct, directed by Bertrand Tavernier, is a fact-based period drama which examines two men working for a Parisian film company during 1942 and 1943, as well as their friends, family, and loved ones. Jean Devaivre (played by Jacques Gamblin) is an assistant director for Continental Pictures, a studio which has recently been taken over by the Germans and is headed by Dr. Greven (Christian Berkel), a self-styled aficionado of French filmmaking. With a wife (Marie Desgranges) and a newborn son to support, Devaivre feels he has little choice but to continue with his work, though as he rises from assisting to becoming a full fledged director thanks to the efforts of Maurice Tourneur (Philippe Morier-Genoud), he struggles to work his own views into his pictures as much as he can. Screenwriter Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydes), a man who lives for wine, women and song (not necessarily in that order), refuses to work for Greven, and as he bounces between his many lovers - actress Suzanne Raymond (Charlotte Kady), no-nonsense streetwalker Olga (Marie Gillain), and soft-hearted Reine (Maria Pitarresi), a struggles to find a way to make a living with his words. Both Devaivre and Aurenche were real-life figures in the French film industry during the occupation, as were many of Safe Conduct's supporting characters; the real life Aurenche went on to write the screenplay for Bertrand Travernier's first feature film. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Camille Claudel director Bruno Nuytten brings us a tale of the kind of l'amour fou that only the French can do so persistently. A moody, intense drama that opens with a present day car crash, Passionnement is told partially as an extended flashback centering on events that took place around Bastille Day ten years earlier. On the island of Porquerolles, Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) spies on Bernard (Gerard Lanvin), a man who has returned to France after living in Brazil for some years. The two had once been lovers, and Alice's obsession with Bernard -- which apparently didn't wane during their time apart -- sets in motion a string of events culminating with the aforementioned car crash. Dysfunction abounds. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

What if you could step 70 years into the future from a portal in your bathroom? French director Cedric Klapisch asks this question and many others in this oddball sci-fi flick. The film opens at a wild Buck Rogers-themed New Year's Eve party on December 31, 1999. After smoking a requist amount of drugs, 25-year-old Arthur (Romain Duris) and his girlfriend Lucie get in the millennial spirit with a spontaneous romp in the bathroom. She is aching to have a kid, though Arthur is more ambivalent on the matter, and at the critical moment, he withdraws. Later, he uses that same bathroom for its intended purpose, and he discovers a ceiling panel that transports him to the sun drenched Paris of the 21st century, which could easily be mistaken for northern Africa. Much of the city looks like a Moroccan souk set amid the Sahara. Only the occasional Mansart roof and the now much shorter Eiffel Tower poking out of the sand reminds Arthur that he is indeed in Paris. He soon meets a white-haired old man named Ako (played by New Wave veteran Jean-Paul Belmondo) who informs him that he his Arthur's son. Ako and his offspring beseech the still vacillating Arthur to impregnate Lucie ASAP so that they may exist. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Three older Jewish women deal with issues in their families and the long shadow of the Holocaust in this episodic drama. In the film's first segment, Rivka (Shulamit Adar) is on a bus tour of Poland with her husband and is accidentally left behind after a stop at a cemetery. She is furious with her husband, who didn't notice that she was missing; she's felt neglected by him for years, but she doesn't have the strength to leave him. The second story moves to Paris, where Regine (Liliane Rovere) receives startling news: her father, who supposedly died in a concentration camp during World War II, is actually alive in Lithuania. When she arrives in Lithuania, she's startled by the sight of her father, a very old man who doesn't quite recognize her, as well as his story: after the liberation of his camp, he made his way on foot and ended up behind the Iron Curtain, from where he was unable to return to Europe. In the final story, Vera (Esther Gorintin) and her neighbors travels from Moscow to Tel Aviv, hoping to visit a cousin who is now in a rest home. She eventually gets lost and is befriended by Rivka, from the first episode. Voyages is the directorial debut for Emmanuel Finkiel, who previously worked as an assistant director for Krzysztof Kieslowski and made a short film that won a César award in France. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Who would have expected Brigitte to marry a prisoner with a long sentence in the first place? In this romantic action movie, that is only the first in a long line of surprising actions by the young woman. Somehow, she manages to get hooked to the young prisoner before realizing that he'll be locked up for another three or four decades. She decides that this is much too long to wait to spend time with her sweetheart and decides to learn how to fly a helicopter. Why? So she can fly in and take him out of his prison yard, which is exactly what she does, thrilling romantics all over France and seriously upsetting the authorities. This award-winning film (it's a 1991 Cannes jury-prize winner) is based on a true incident from 1986. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This follow-up to the 1986 hit comedy follows the pattern of most sequels by failing to live up to the original. In his search for a jacket containing a wining lottery ticket, a white policeman makes contact with African immigrants living in Paris. He is followed by a black journalist and a big black mamma who has fallen in love with the white man. The highlight of the film is the performance of Black comic Eric Blanc, providing hilarious impressions of white people. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Directed by TV-anthology veteran Jeannot Szwarc, Enigma has a certain small-screen "feel" to it. Adopting a musical-comedy foreign accent, Martin Sheen plays Alex Holbeck, an Iron Curtain defector who returns to East Germany at the behest of the CIA. His mission is to save five political "undesirables" from the communists. Holbeck runs up against some formidable opposition, namely ambitious KGB agent Dimitri Vasilkov (Sam Neill) and a quintet of highly trained Soviet assassins. Brigitte Fossey co-stars as Holbeck's former love, whom he involves in his escape plans by asking her to romance the susceptible Vasilkov. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dick Richards directed this French Foreign Legion adventure that's at once parodies and pays tribute to the venerable Hollywood epics that preceded it. Gene Hackman stars as Major William Sherman Foster, a soldier who has been kicked out of West Point but has managed to obtain command of a group of Legionnaires after the end of World War I. His troops have been ordered to accompany an archeological expedition traveling to Morocco headed by Francois Marneau (Max von Sydow). Foster's motley band includes an on-the-lam cat burglar named Marco Segrain (Terence Hill), an ex-guardsman from the deposed Russian monarchy named Ivan (Jack O'Halloran), an adventure-seeking aristocrat named Fred Hastings (Paul Sherman), and an alluring beauty named Simone Picard (Catherine Deneuve). As the band makes their way to Morocco, they cross paths with the fervid and bloodthirsty Arab leader El Krim (Ian Holm), who vows to unite his people to expel foreigners from their land. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide