Richard Bohringer Movies

This drama tells the tale of union woes at a French factory, and of the single mom who gives her all for the union cause. Pierrette (Dominique Labourier) is the young mother, and she somehow has time to have an affair with her handsome co-worker who is nicknamed Beau Masque (Luigi Diberti). All this grows more complicated when the workers go out on strike. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Focusing on the characters of those involved, this French drama explores a political campaign in a small town and the corruption which enters into it. Sex education gets the countrified locals all roused up against a citified school reformer, even though it is actually a side issue. The farmer whose concerns are picked up as a theme by the right-wing politicos figures out that he is being used. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Michel Gauché, a stunt double and trickster who is crazy in love with his former fiancee, work-mate, and fellow stunt performer Jane (Raquel Welch). She, however, is so angry with him for landing her in the hospital due to a badly performed stunt that she breaks off the engagement. Belmondo also plays Bruno Ferrari, the movie star he is doubling for, an effeminate homosexual who lusts after his stuntman. Because Jane is angry with Michel, she falls into the arms of a film producer, and arranges for Michel to re-do the same stunt over and over again endlessly. She also tries to woo Bruno the movie star and discovers that he is not interested in women. Michel tries hard to win her back, sometimes pretending to be the movie star, which confuses her to no end. Just as she is about to marry a dull aristocrat, Belmondo appears in an old gorilla outfit and abducts her from the aisles of the church. Belmondo was famous for doing all his own stunts, and he continued that tradition in this film. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In one of Coluche's earlier films, the late French comedian stars in this standard comedy by Claude Zidi as the inept police inspector, Michel Clement. The senior Clement was a spectacular policeman, and Michel finds it particularly difficult to try and walk in his father's footsteps without tripping. At the moment he is after Roger Morzini (Gerard Depardieu), a dangerous gangster who eventually kidnaps Marie-Anne Prossant (Dominique Lavanant). She is a journalist traveling with Michel as he tries to track down Morzini. Her objective was to get an interview with the gangster, and now she has more than she bargained for. Meanwhile, Michel tries to get his act together and rescue her. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The diva of the title is a famous black opera singer (Wilhelmina Wiggins-Fernandez) who steadfastly refuses to be recorded. The singer is idolized by young French mail-carrier Jules (Frederic Andrei), who sneaks a tape recorder into the theater and records her performance. This is witnessed by a pair of Taiwanese criminals, who unlike Andrei wish to profit from the bootlegged recording. They begin to pursue the boy, as do a couple of home-grown hooligans who believe that Jules is in possession of some murder evidence. The serpentine plot leads to a warm friendship between Jules and the reclusive diva - and to a brilliantly photographed (by Philipe Rousselot) motorcycle chase through the subway tunnels of Paris. Diva marked the directorial debut of Jean-Jacques Beineix, whose obvious fondness for the more esoteric techniques of the Nouvelle Vague never impedes his willingness to simply entertain his audiences. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A Jewish Mafia-like family is running a prostitution ring, selling "protection," and operating gambling casinos -- more or less with impunity, and at peace with their Arab counterparts -- until a young gangster (Bernard Giraudeau) decides to pit the two ethnic factions against each other. Jewish cultural and religious events are celebrated by the Jewish gangsters, who promote family traditions -- in contrast to the police inspector who has no family and is out to do them all in. Focusing on the Jewish mob boss, the story has him undergoing some personal rehabilitation in the end. Actually, comparing the merits of ethnically and religiously different mobs of gangsters might be a little like comparing the respective beauty of a pair of week-old corpses. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this creatively organized story of one "delinquent," director Patrick Chaput has put together a well-paced drama/thriller set in part against the dark by-ways of Paris. Seventeen-year-old Daniel (Philippe Sfez) grew up in foster homes in a rural area and those years contrast with his later youth in Paris. A filmmaker opts to interview Daniel for a documentary on delinquency, and that is how the young man's past and precarious present start coming to light. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Directors Jean-Henri Roger and Juliet Berto begin this thriller with sequences on the contemporary politics of southern France and the infiltration of organized crime into real estate development there -- the crime bosses were torching forest tracts to make way for their development schemes in the early 1980s. In the fictionalized story, Paula Barretto (Juliet Berto) is caught in this underworld because her father was involved in the drug business, her brother is in the real estate scam, and her lover is an armed thief. Although she tries to get out of her corrupt and dangerous environment, it is not an easy task when even the police officers cannot be trusted, and the underworld has informants everywhere. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The action in this attempt at farce and drama starts moving when a prostitute just out of prison overwhelms a young man with her charms in their shared train compartment and ends up getting invited to his home. Once there, other than inducing some unusual behavior in the members of the family, she plans to kill off the pimp who got her into jail on false charges -- and get away with murder. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The "years of the twist" dance craze in Algeria coincided with the years that ended in the liberation from French colonial rule and finally won independence for the nation. As two young men of 20 or so are learning how to "twist" and how to snatch money without working for it, political realities loom larger and larger on the horizon, until both men realize they will have to take sides in this issue of independence -- their decisions, however, are not the same. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This technically impressive throwback to the early days of film noir stars Richard Berry as Bruno, a young actor who seems to get blamed for everything. Spotting a gorgeous female shoplifter (Victoria Abril) in trouble, Bruno decides to help her and gets arrested in her place. While lamenting his fate in prison, he is blamed for an escape attempt in which a psychotic guard (Richard Bohringer) is shot. When Bruno's sentence is lengthened, the guard makes his life a nightmare until the terrorized prisoner must lash out in the ultimate rebellion against (and surrender to) his inescapable fate. Director Denis Amar's moody film is strong on atmosphere but weak in characterization, despite an impressively sadistic turn by Bohringer, and the movie leaves the viewer flat rather than moved. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide