Jacques Spiesser Movies
- 2001
Four people discuss love and life, learning (and revealing) more about each other than they ever imagined in this intimate drama from director Anne-Marie Mieville. A middle-aged woman (Mieville) and her younger, attractive friend Cathos (Claude Perron) return home from an evening out with elderly Robert (Jean-Luc Godard). After Cathos makes a vain attempt to seduce Robert, the older woman steps out to buy cigarettes. She soon returns, and has brought an attractive young man named Arthur (Jacques Spiesser) along with her. Soon the four are discussing philosophy, literature, and their own intertwined relationships, as Robert and the older woman open up about the failings of their own romance. Some of the realism of Apres La Reconciliation can be attributed to the fact that Mieville and Godard are a long-time couple in real life; this also marks the fourth time they've acted together, though the first time was in a film directed solely by Mieville (Godard was a collaborator on the other three films in which they both appeared). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Claude Perron, Anne-Marie Miéville, (more)
The French-filmed Baxter is based on the American novel Hell Hound. The title character is a bull terrier, who in the course of the film has many masters--and for good reason. Baxter has been instrumental in the deaths or serious injuries of most of the human beings who've come in contact with him. The dog's latest owner is a young neo-Nazi. nd Baxter makes it quite clear (to the audience at least) what he has in store for this fellow. Don't be misled by the title or the fact that the leading character is a dog with a full range of human emotions; Baxter is not a family film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lise Delamare, Jean Mercure, (more)
The inaugural film effort of French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, Black and White in Color is set during World War I. Upon the outbreak of hostilities, a French trading post in West Central Africa finds itself at odds with a formerly peaceful German post, for no other reason than their parent countries are at war. The newly xenophobic French traders attack the Germans, only to fail in their efforts. Socialist Jacques Spiesser is put in charge of the debilitated French contingent, utterly discarding his former high ideals in the process. Filmed on location on the Ivory Coast, the satirical Black and White in Color (originally La Victoire en Chantant) won the American Academy Award for Best Foreign Film of 1976. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean Carmet, Jacques Dufilho, (more)
- 2006
This French-language feature, starring and directed by the acclaimed blues maestro Richard Bohringer, was loosely adapted from the musician's roman-a-clef, and almost completely omits a central narrative. In it, a young writer pursues an idolized artist through the various experiences and exotic locales of his continual wanderings, from Paris to Mareille to Africa. Bohringer thus attempts to capture various moods and feelings, with a heavy emphasis on nocturnal events. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- 1972
Faustine (Muriel Catala) suffers the wounds of first love in this gentle French film. During a summer when she is staying with her grandmother, she comes to know the nearby neighbors. Two brothers live in the large house. One is divorced and one has recently remarried, both of them live there with their teenaged and adult children. Though the boys of the household are drawn to Faustine, she grows ever more smitten with the divorced older man. During one visit she has to hide in his room to avoid the unwelcome attentions of his sons. As the summer draws to a close she has her first amorous kiss. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
A young sound engineer whose mother has recently been murdered uses her expertise in audio to launch her own investigation into the case, only to find that the sounds of the past could prove key to solving a mystery of the present in director Alanté Kavaïté's poetic thriller. Charlotte's mother has been mysteriously murdered, but the grieving daughter isn't about to let the investigations stall due to the simple incompetence of the local police force. When Charlotte travels back to the house that her mother lived in at the time of the murder and makes an audio recording that seems to be of supernatural origins, the surreal events that follow lead the once-skeptical girl down a darkened path that threatens to consume her own soul with each new terrifying revelation. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Émilie Dequenne, Ludmila Mikael, (more)
- 2006
Director David Oelhoeffen's French-language picture Nos retrouvailles - a resolutely disturbing psychological drama with an added element of crime - explores the damage wrought by an über-dysfunctional father on his straight-laced son. Jacques Gamblin stars as Gabriel, a thuggish character harboring an irrepressible grudge over money that someone allegedly swiped from him. With bitterness in his heart, this thoughtless and slimy brute cajoles his innocent son, the dishwasher Marco (Nicolas Giraud) into first tailing a night watchman (Jacques Spiesser) and then breaking into a warehouse to reclaim the "funds" - despite the inherent dangers posed by this scheme. Oelhoeffen co-authored the script with Antoine Lacomblez. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nicolas Giraud, Jacques Gamblin, (more)
- 1975
Based on a groundbreaking 19th-century French trial, this movie recreates the courtroom controversy surrounding a young man who, after losing his religious faith, killed his mother and other siblings in order to assist his father. The trial was the first in French history to permit psychological factors to contribute to the testimony. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jacques Spiesser, Michel Robin, (more)
- 1989
In this psychologically rich but fairly uneventful drama, Marie (Marie Carre) is a woman with two kittens, a demanding job, an obtrusive mother, and no men in her life. Eventually she and a somewhat bedraggled older man meet and become lovers for a while. Just when she thinks they may have something going on, she doesn't hear from him for a while, and when she finally does, as luck would have it, she's in bed with someone else. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jacques Spiesser, Marie Carre, (more)
- 1974
This quirky French film examines a series of events during the German occupation of France and shows what might have happened if one thing had gone differently in each instance. The first story given this treatment concerns the assassination of a German officer by a young member of the Resistance. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pierre Clémenti, Jacques Spiesser, (more)
- 1974
In this film, a group of French kids face the difficult transition from childhood to adulthood as they struggle through their teenage years. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lino Ventura, Annie Girardot, (more)
This French sex farce is translated in English as The Trout. Joseph Losey directed and co-wrote the film, which stars Isabelle Huppert as Frederique, a young woman living on her family's rural trout farm. Frederique is trapped in a dull marriage to a rube. She decides to leave him and the trout farm for the city; she wants to make her living in the financial sector. She ends up in a cutthroat corporate world and meets up with the sophisticated Lou (the legendary Jeanne Moreau). Frederique finds herself trading sexual favors for corporate advancement and becoming more deeply involved in a complicated series of business dealings. Eventually, she longs for a return to her simpler life on the trout farm. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Isabelle Huppert, Jeanne Moreau, (more)
- 2000
Noted French filmmaker Laurence Ferreira Barbosa directs this loosely-structured triptych about a trio of unconnected people who struggle through the loneliness of their lives. Impetuous 17-year-old Marguerite (Lolita Chammah), who feels cut off from both her family and classmates, passes the time by talking to God. Eventually, she decides to enter a convent. Meanwhile, housewife Claire (Isabelle Hubbert) is frustrated after ten years of childless marriage. While going to visit a fertility expert in Paris, she happens upon an old lover, gets picked up by some guy at a bar and has a bizarre encounter with an America singer (Robert Kramer). Meantime, Jacques (Frederic Pierrot) is divorced, unemployed, and loathed by his daughter. Just as his life looks one long exercise in desperate futility, he meets comely Eva (Juliette Andrea). Suddenly, he transforms himself into a private dick, trying to track down a missing associate. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Juliette Andres, Lolita Chammah, (more)
- 1999
In this bittersweet look back at the trials of growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Emilie (Magali Woch), Ines (Ingrid Molinier), Stella (Julie-Marie Parmentier), and Marion (Camille Rousselet) become friends as they share the humiliations that are a part of adolescent life -- going to school, dealing with your parents, dealing with the emotional abuse of your peer group. La vie ne me fait pas peur spent several years in production; during a layoff in shooting, director Noemie Lvovsky shot a television film with the same characters entitled Petites, and later incorporated footage from the TV project into this film. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Magalie Woch, Ingrid Molinier, (more)
- 1977
Fayard (Patrick Dewaere) is a magistrate of the French courts, who is unusually enthusiastic in seeking justice. For instance, when his girlfriend is trapped in a store-front bordello, he has no qualms about arranging (and joining) a police raid on the place. This stunt earned him the nickname "the Sheriff." However, this otherwise shy and diminutive fellow has made many enemies, both in the bureaucracy and among the criminal classes, and before long they catch up to him. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Patrick Dewaere, Aurore Clément, (more)
- 1976
A homeless young man, living in his delivery truck, is simultaneously adopted by a pranksome group of youngsters and made into a police informer. Believing that he is doing something good both for the other kids and for himself, he has no qualms. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jacques Spiesser, Isabelle Huppert, (more)
- 1976
Actress Jeanne Moreau made her directorial debut with this tale about a gathering of actresses who, over the course of an all-night conversation, come to reassess their careers and romantic lives. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Francine Racette, Jeanne Moreau, (more)
- 1997
Winner of the 1997 French Cesar award for "Best Short Film," this evocative moment between an Ashkenazi Jew and a woman from Israel -- both in their later years -- is portrayed with delicacy, sensitivity, and an understanding of a culture that is disappearing. The Ashkenazi Jews who have retired to the region fill their days with memories of bygone times, with walks, with card games, with stories, and all along know that their Yiddish-speaking culture is declining. While the Jewish tailor and the Israeli woman slowly evolve a charming and touching attraction to each other, his pretending to read the French newspaper is a poignant demonstration of the difference between his past and his present. A related theme is explored in a 1984 British documentary, Almonds and Raisins, which takes a close look at the vanishing Yiddish language and culture in relation to the 300 or so Yiddish movies made in the era of early talkies. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nathan Cogan, Shulamit Adar, (more)
A businessman tries to belatedly learn the fine art of friendship in this comedy from French filmmaker Patrice Leconte. François (Daniel Auteuil) is an antique dealer who runs an upscale shop with his business partner, Catherine (Julie Gayet). François is a gently ruthless trader who will do nearly anything to make a deal, and when Catherine throws him a birthday party, someone points out that all the guests are business associates, not personal friends. While François protests that he does indeed have friends, Catherine calls him on it and makes him a deal -- if he can produce his best friend within ten days, he'll be allowed to keep a valuable vase he recently found for the shop, but if not, the vase will belong to her. François agrees to the challenge, but while going through his address book, he begins to realize he really doesn't have any especially close friends. Over the course of several days, François keeps running into Bruno (Dany Boon), a gregarious and friendly taxi driver, and while Bruno's personality rubs François the wrong way, he notices that the cabbie has a way of making (most) people like him. Eager to win his bet with Catherine, François recruits Bruno to give him a crash course in making friends and influencing people, hoping to find a buddy before his deadline. Mon Meilleur Ami (aka My Best Friend) received its North American premiere at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Auteuil, Dany Boon, (more)
- 1986
Students of film history will appreciate the many tributes to famous films of yore which appear in this first-time feature directed and written by former drama teacher Francis Huster. In the story, a mild-mannered bank clerk has heroic dreams of being a real he-man. Given his diffident, shy nature, it comes as a bit of a surprise that not only does he actually have a girlfriend, but he has managed to get her pregnant. However, she doesn't fit his image of himself, and he can't bring himself to marry her. When the bank he works in is robbed by a daring group which includes a magnetically attractive woman, the clerk throws his lot in with them and becomes an outlaw. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Francis Huster, Béatrice Dalle, (more)
- 2006
A woman finds a new and unexpected romance with a younger man in this romantic drama set in France in 1950. Monique (Catherine Frot) is a woman in her late forties who has been left to run the family farm after her ne'er do well husband abandoned her during the war. Monique does nearly all the labor on the farm with the help of her teenage son Paulo (Jean-Pierre Moncorge), while her daughter Jeanne (Laura Smet), the local schoolmarm, lives nearby and helps Monique care for Prudence (Isabelle Sadoyan), her elderly mother-in-law. One day, a handsome drifter, Joseph (Gregori Derangere), happens by looking for work; he has experience in helping to run a farm, so Monique makes him the new hired hand. Joseph's presence causes no small stir among the local women, and flirty Angele (Mathilde Seigner) wastes no time letting Joseph know that's she's available and interested. However, Jeanne is also quite taken with the rugged but charming laborer, and while Monique has an on-again off-again romance with Maurice (Francois Berleand), a local politician who holds the deed to the farm, she's hardly immune to Joseph's spell, and finds herself a rival with her daughter for the affections of a man nearly half her age. Le Passager de l'ete (aka One Summer) was the first feature film from director Florence Moncorge-Gabin, daughter of the legendary French actor Jean Gabin. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Catherine Frot, Grégori Derangère, (more)
