Jacques Villeret Movies

A series of tragedies befalls a small French town near the front during World War I in Yves Angelo's Grey Souls. As the film opens, the body of a young girl, Morning Beauty (Joséphine Japy) is found on the banks of the river, an apparent murder victim. We then flash back several months. Lysia (Marina Hands of The Barbarian Invasions), a pretty young woman, arrives in town to take the place of a shell-shocked schoolteacher. Because the teacher has defiled his room, Lysia moves into a small cottage on the estate of the taciturn local prosecutor, Destinat (Jean-Pierre Marielle), who has recently retired. While Lysia obsesses over her lover, who is away at the front, Destinat obsesses over Lysia, surreptitiously opening her love letters before giving them to her. Then a letter arrives that Destinat has trouble bringing himself to turn over to the lovelorn woman. The atmosphere of death and despair grows in the town. A policeman (Denis Podalydès) with a pregnant wife is routinely harassed by resentful soldiers on their way to the front. After the little girl's body is discovered, a witness comes forward who saw Destinat with her shortly before her death. But Mierck (Jacques Villeret of The Dinner Game), the vulgar, mean-spirited judge in charge of the case, and his cruel military attaché, Matziev (Franck Manzoni), seem less interested in actually solving the crime than in pinning it on some hapless lowlife. Grey Souls was scripted by Angelo and Philippe Claudel, based on Claudel's novel. The pair had previously collaborated on Sur le Bout des Doigts. Grey Souls was shown by the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of their Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in 2006. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

When a man kills his wife -- who happened to be the most hated woman in the village -- no one is sure if he should be punished or congratulated in this darkly farcical comedy. Jojo (Jacques Villeret) runs a small farm in rural France, and asks for little from life; all he wants to do is finish his chores, tend his goats, and work on his stamp collection. But Jojo's wife Lulu (Josiane Balasko) will not hear of it; often drunk and chronically ill-tempered, Lulu goes out of her way to make Jojo miserable, and she's earned the frightened enmity of nearly everyone in town. After Lulu destroys both his stamp collection and his milk pails in a fit of pique, Jojo visits a lawyer, Jacquard (Andre Dussollier), and posing as a wife-killer, asks how he would defend him in court. With Jacquard's strategy fresh in mind, Jojo contemplates doing away with Lulu when he finds out that she's already made plans to finish him off with poisoned wine. A sudden fight with a bread knife finds Lulu dead and Jojo on trial for murder. Jacquard finds himself putting his earlier theories to work when he's hired to defend Jojo, but to his surprise, many of Jojo and Lulu's neighbors arrive to lend a degree of support. While practically no one will say that Jojo is innocent of the crime, everyone agrees that the community is better off without Lulu -- and are willing to say so in court. Un Crime Au Paradis is a remake of the 1951 hit La Poison; the box-office success of Un Crime Au Paradis in France led to a theatrical re-release of the earlier film. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A lighthearted and nostalgic drama about life among a group of close-knit friends, Les Enfants du Marais/Children of the Marshland tells the tale of a girl named Cri-Cri, who in flashback recalls growing up in a community along a quiet marsh in France. Her father, Riton (Jacques Villeret), has a good heart but a weakness for wine, and has never entirely gotten over being left by his wife (and Cri-Cri's mother), even though he's since remarried. His best friend is Garris (Jacques Gamblin), a laborer who lives in a cabin left to him by an old friend (Jacques Dufilho) and finds himself infatuated with Marie (Isabelle Carre), who works as a domestic in a nearby town. Both men are still dealing with their experiences from World War I, as is their friend Mr. Richard (Michel Serrault), who turned a junk business into a successful metal foundry but still visits his old pals at the marsh, because he feels they're the only ones who understand him. Despite lukewarm reviews, Les Enfants Du Marais/Children of the Marshland proved to be a significant box office success on its initial release in France. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A talking chimp, a jolly monk and a boxer on the run make an unlikely team in this French comedy for children. Brother Benoit (Jacques Villeret), a French monk working with underprivileged youth in Mexico, one day finds a sick chimpanzee in need of water and medical attention. He brings the chimp back to his mission and nurses her back to health, naming her Mookie. A year later, Brother Benoit discovers Mookie can not only play basketball, but she can talk, the result of an exposure to radiation from a meteor crash. Primate experts from America are eager to get their hands on the little ape, but the Brother will allow no experiments to be performed on her. The Brother recruits Antoine (Eric Cantona), a boxer down on his luck, to help Mookie and the Brother flee to Mexico City, but when it turns out Antoine is wanted by the Mexican Mafia for not throwing a fight, all three must make tracks to insure their safety. Director Herve Palud's previous children's success, Un Indien dans la Ville, was Americanized in the successful Tim Allen vehicle Jungle 2 Jungle. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The conversations of an ill-suited couple who came together through personal ads form the framework of this French film that is comprised of a series of five strange, outworldly tales. The first tale, "Burning Revenge," tells of a man who pours gasoline over a service station in the dead of night and then uses a lit cigarette to threaten the attendant. The second, "Panic FM," follows a pizza delivery boy on his bicycle. While on his route, he is listening to a gory radio show and keeps encountering scary ghosts. "Dead End" depicts a couple who experience the same accident over and over while cruising down a country road. The fourth vignette "Sado's Blues" takes a darkly comedic turn as it chronicles the tale of a masochistic woman who invites a timid fellow up to her apartment and demands that he use her "toys" while having sex with her. The final tale "Happy Birthday" follows a wife and lover as they kill the husband using a diving outfit and a forest fire. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this comedy, veterinarian Henri Sauveur (Jean Rochefort) maintains his dignity and calm in the face of an incredible number of irritating or even genuinely upsetting encounters with inveterate pains-in-the-neck. He suffers from the rudeness (and worse) of Parisian drivers, his relatives, and friends and clients. All the same, he manages to convey an admirable appearance of insouciance and a devil-may-care attitude. That is, until he meets the redoubtable Louise Sherry (Miou-Miou). He is so smitten with her charms that his artfully maintained defenses crumble pitifully, and he is reduced to confiding his troubles to a bemused but sympathetic female chimpanzee. This fast-paced comedy features some of France's best-loved actors and comedians, including Claude Brasseur, Jean Yanne, and Jacques Villeret) in walk-on performances. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

All five stories in this anthology comedy are tied together by their theme: they concern the encounters of a youthful psychiatrist (Thierry Lhermitte) with his patients, or with people so crazy they ought to be his patients. Each one is filmed by a different director. The first situation occurs when the doctor takes refuge at a country inn on a very stormy night. That very night, the inn's ancient maid, who has suffered endless abuse at their hands, kills her addled employers. Not only that, but she insists that the young doctor keep her company. In another scene, an honest television game show has produced a winner whom everybody dislikes: he is a brilliant performer, but he is an obnoxious racist besides. Every attempt to trip him up and get him off the show fails, and the increasingly agitated host eventually has a mental breakdown. The bigger segments are tied together by scenes taking place in the psychiatrist's waiting rooms. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This film is based on a short novel by Russian author Anton Chekhov, with the settings changed to 1870 France. It concerns the romantic frustration of two extremely pleasant and civilized people. Alexandre (Jacques Villaret) is a middle-aged bachelor, pleasant and well-to-do, who fears the prospect of a lonely old age. With that in mind, he proposes to Julia (Sabine Azema), the beautiful and young only daughter of the town doctor. Given the lack of any real acquaintance between them, when she accepts his proposal, he is surprised. Once they are married, he is bitterly disappointed to discover that Julia married him because she also fears a lonely old age. Unskilled in matters of the heart, he had hoped and imagined that she was at least a little in love with him. When a financial reverse looms on the horizon, he throws himself into work and ignores his relationship with his new wife, who gradually has come to love him, though he remains unaware of this fact. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Martin Morel (Jean Poiret) is a philandering executive who talks his friend Guillaume (Jacques Villeret) into posing as the husband of his teenage mistress in this uneven romantic comedy. Morel's indulgent wife Beatrice (Eva Darlan) must decide whether or not to forgive Martin after Guillaume and the mistress fall in love. All the action takes place at the Morel family's Alpine ski resort. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

When he inherits the family house and property after his mother's death, aspiring novelist Fane (Jean-Pierre Bacri) returns home with his bimbo girlfriend Lilas (Pauline Lafont). He must care for his idiot brother Mo (Jacques Villeret) and contend with a greedy garage owner (Guy Marchand) who covets Fane's property to expand his business. When efforts to buy the property are fruitless, the mechanic incites the townsfolk against the strange trio. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi