Zabou

An honest man finds himself involved in an insurance fraud scheme -- but with the best of intentions -- in this French comedy. Ivan (Vincent Lindon) runs a woodworking shop founded by his grandfather. With a handful of employees and a devoted clientele, his business is doing well and Ivan takes genuine pride in its success. One day, Ivan and his employees return from lunch to discover their building is burning down. While Ivan is not happy, he's secure in the knowledge that his insurance will pay his damages and keep him afloat. Or at least that's what he thinks: it turns out that Maxime (Francois Berleand), Ivan's insurance agent, worked out a scheme where he could file policies with an insurance company retroactively and pocket the rest of the premiums. However, Maxime's partner in this scheme has taken a powder, so he comes up with an idea: Maxime, Ivan, and Sami (Roschdy Zem), who lives with Ivan's former wife, will break into the insurance company's office, tap into their computer system, and enter the policy that Ivan thought would be there all along. If this plan succeeds, Ivan can stay in business (good news for Ivan) and continue to pay alimony and child support (good news for Sami), while Maxime can avoid going to jail (good news for Maxime). If they fail, of course, they'll all go to jail, which is bad news for everyone. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

His estranged wife is worth millions, but poor Paris resident Richard is homeless and jobless. He applied for unemployment benefits and now faces charges of fraud. To save himself from nine months in jail he must find his wife and force her to tell the courts the truth, that though she has married a politically-ambitious American governor and is filing U.S. tax returns, she is technically still married to Richard. But as she lives in America, how can he get to her? Opportunity knocks when Richard learns that she and her husband will be attending an international conference at an exclusive Paris hotel. To get in he will need a disguise. Meanwhile, at the hotel, the concierge and the director are panic stricken by the prospect of a surprise visit by an unknown auditor who is coming to check out allegations of a hotel-run prostitution ring. They immediately banish all their call girls from the premises, but one refuses to leave without a fight. She too is eventually ejected, and while in the middle of the street she has a charming encounter with Richard, who is disguised as a bum. When the seeming vagrant ambles into the hotel, the managers immediately mistake him for the auditor and instead of booting him out, the hoteliers roll out the red carpet and treat Richard like a king. While he continues his endeavors to see his wife, several other subplots add to the confusion, including one in which a naive couple from the country tries to reach the American governor in hopes of hashing out an international business deal. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Martine and Jacques (Zabou and Sam Karmann) knew their friend before he became an important television personality, but have not seen him for over ten years. They are hospitable people - witness the fact that they have been putting up with having writer Georges (Jean-Pierre Bacri) be their informal roommate, as he sleeps on their living-room sofa off and on over the years whenever he is between jobs. They have invited their friend and his wife Charlotte (Agnes Jaoui) over for dinner, and are on pins and needles, as they want everything to go just right. Instead, George allows his bitterness that Charlotte, his ex-girlfriend, married a success to overwhelm him, and Martine and Jacques are apalled when their brother, who hasn't a penny and is deeply in debt, persuades their guest of honor to join him in a high-stakes poker game. The many subcurrents taking place between the celebrity and everyone else necessitate frequent conferences in the kitchen. This movie is based on a successful stage play, and features the original cast. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

One might assume that the original title of this French production was C'est La Vie. Wrong: the film was initially released as La Baule-les-Pins, then distributed to English speaking countries under a more "understandable" French cognomen. The film is set during a deceptively idyllic summer. Two young girls are fascinated bystanders as their parents' marriage dissolves and their mother takes up with a younger man. What might have been material for tear-stained drama in an American film is treated with perceptive humor in C'est La Vie. Director Diane Kurys cowrote the screenplay with Alain Le Henry. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this light French comedy, Marie and Jerome (Marlene Jobert) and Patrick Chesnais) are a middle aged couple desperate to have a child. They have tried to deal with the official adoption agencies, but the bureaucracies are so hidebound that they'll likely reach their dotage before a child becomes available. Next they try to persuade a pregnant teen to give up her baby, but that doesn't work either. Marie and Jerome are left to resort to more desperate measures. Various well-known French funnymen have cameos, including Romain Bouteille and Christian Clavier. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Claude Brasseur stars in this cinemadaptation of the Moliere play Georges Dandin, ou le mari confondu. Written in 1668, the play has been somewhat dwarfed by such like-vintage Moliere classics as The Imaginary Invalid. Still, it was popular enough in its time to inspire imitation, most notably Betterton's Don Juan and The Amorous Widow. The plot, involving a wealthy man's avoidance of marriage until he is trapped by a crafty widow, is but a peg upon which to hang any number of comic complications and character vignettes. Brasseur's leading lady is the toothsome Zabou. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy-drama, a young but sterile man suddenly wants to be a father. A friend calls this the "kangaroo complex," because male kangaroos do not have pouches to carry their offspring. So Loic (Roland Giraud, just out of his starring role in Trois Hommes et une Couffin later to be remade in the U.S. as Three Men and a Baby), goes looking for a solution to his "complex." He cannot have children himself because of a bad case of the mumps when he was in his mid-20s. That does not leave many options open to him until he accidentally comes across his old girlfriend with her 6-year-old son and notes that the little boy looks a lot like him. It does not take much to convince him that the boy is his own but once having reached that conclusion, the rest of his plan for new-found fatherhood is loaded with pitfalls. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this caper comedy, Gilbert was young once, though one would never know it to see him now. He is middle-aged, middle-class, and has an extremely boring job through which he supports his wife and child. It's a pretty odd job, though: he operates the incinerator in the basement of his bank which destroys old, soiled bank notes. That's hard, cold cash to everyone else. Then Serge, a childhood buddy, shows up, Serge was also in a rock band with Gilbert but has now become pretty much a full-time scoundrel. The nature of Gilbert's job leads the old buddy to try and ensnare Gilbert in a scheme to make off with millions of untraceable bills. Unfortunately for Serge, he just can't keep his mitts off of anything, including Gilbert's wife. When Gilbert finds out about it, this throws a big monkeywrench into their theft plans. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Basically an updated take on "Bringing Up Baby," this screwy French comedy centers on the travails of a paleontologist (Gerard Depardieu) whose delight at finding the skeleton of the first French woman is dampened by the presence of an aggressive advertising executive (Sigourney Weaver) who is determined to exploit the find to sell her perfume. Both of the rivals also compete to earn a generous grant from an aging philanthropist (Dr.Ruth Westheimer). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Lacking the bite to be really funny, this wilted farce stars French comedian Coluche as Michel Bernardin, a white-collar trouble-shooter for tourists caught in a bind, or in bandages, depending on the problem. His business "Planet Assistance" sends people all over to help travelers in need, and as his first assignment of the moment, Michel goes off to a North African nation to get a man out of the hospital and back to Paris. After he arrives, he escapes from the hospital and the country with the wrong man and accidentally sets off a coup d'etat. Next, in New York, he is attacked by men who think he is a drug lord when he is in Harlem trying to bring a hospitalized musician home to France. Lastly, he goes to Hong Kong where he comes across his fiancée but is also an unwitting puppet of some racketeers. By this time, the comedy has sunk so low it has dipped completely out of sight. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide