Roger Dumas Movies

Filmmakers Erez Tadmor and Guy Nattiv expand their award-winning 2004 short into a feature length film tracing the unlikely romance between an Israeli kibbutznik and a Palestinian woman as the meet serendipitously on their way to the World Cup finals in Berlin. Eyal and Rana are two soccer fans who, despite being sworn enemies by birth, cannot deny the sparks that they feel after their bags get mistakenly swapped on the subway. In the three days that follow, these two disparate souls somehow manage to transcend the deep-rooted conflicts that have plagued their people for so long, and find true love in the chaos of world cup fever. Then, just as quickly as she appeared, Rana is gone. As news of a second Israeli-Lebanon war makes headlines, Eyal decides to throw caution to the wind and follow his true love back to Paris. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

It's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys in this slick, densely plotted thriller from France. Cash (Jean Dujardin) is a suave and well-mannered outlaw who specializes in grand-scale heists that turn on carefully constructed confidence games as much as muscle. When Cash's brother and partner in crime Solal (Clovis Cornillac) is killed by members of a rival outfit who try to force their way into a carefully planned heist, Cash assembles a new crew to rob the gunmen for their ill-gotten gains. Cash joins forces with Maxime Dubreuil (Jean Reno), a gifted veteran thief who brings along his beautiful protégé Garance (Alice Taglioni). As Cash, Maxime and Garance map out plans for the robbery of a lifetime, they're joined by Julia (Valeria Golino), a beautiful woman with a full compliment of criminal skills. But what they don't know is that Julia is actually an undercover police officer who is looking to shut down Cash's operation from the inside. Cash was written and directed by Eric Besnard; it was his second feature as director after establishing himself as one of France's leading screenwriters. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Claude Chabrol's Comedy of Power stars Isabelle Huppert as a French judge who attempts to bring down the very powerful but corrupt CEO of a large corporation. As she digs deeper into the case, she uncovers criminal activity that stretches into the highest levels of government, and her life is turned upside down by death threats as well as her sudden celebrity. The film follows as her career affects her family. Loosely based on real events, Comedy of Power had its North American debut at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Tina (Sophie Aubry) is an unpleasant young woman with an unpleasantly supine mother and an unpleasantly futureless boyfriend. Even for someone whose range of facial expressions consists of mild-to-moderate sulking, this is too much, and she decides to look up the father she has never known. Along the way, she discovers that she has a half sister whom she has never met, a girl involved in an intense, abusive relationship with a married man: her father's lawyer. Tina eventually meets up with her father and discovers, naturally enough, that he is not a particularly nice man and furthermore wants nothing whatever to do with her. Somehow all these new people in Tina's life continue to be involved with each other, despite the resounding lack of joy they seem to feel in each other's company. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Celine (Sophie Marceau) must choose between Tarquin (Lambert Wilson) and Aurele (Stephane Fries) in this historical drama set during the French Civil War of 1793. The Republican Army decimated Western France when an insurgence of peasants, clergy, and aristocrats loyal to the Royalists staged a counterrevolution. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Christophe Malavoy and Francois Cluzet are business partners who are accused of stealing a safe from a wealthy tycoon in this situation comedy. A practical joke backfires when the two make their colleague (Jean -Claude Leguay) believe he has won the lottery. The owner of the safe calls the police, who chase after the scheming duo. The two steal the safe a second time to cover the loss of the money taken in the first burglary. Monique (Veronique Genest) is the sultry police commissioner and former flame of the robbery victim who investigates the bizarre case. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

In this semi-autobiographical comedy by Francis Perrin, he plays a character partially based on himself in the guise of Francois Veber, a lowly electrician from the provinces who finds success as an actor in the Comedie-Francaise. Veber/Perrin goes to study acting at the Paris Conservatoire and has some fine teachers who help to hone his latent comic abilities. After coming to the attention of his superiors as an excellent student (he won a Conservatoire competition with a monologue from "The Marriage of Figaro"), Veber/Perrin is accepted into the prestigious Comedie-Francaise. Defying the judgment of its administrator, he pulls off a rousing interpretation of Moliere's Scapin. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In spite of spending three hours developing the story of French peasant Charles Saganne (Gérard Depardieu), the sweep of this epic skims over the qualities that transformed Saganne from an ordinary officer to a great military leader. Saganne was first sent to a garrison town in North Africa before Colonel Dubreuilh (Philippe Noiret) assigned him to other missions, finally giving him a chance to exercise his innate ability to lead men. After a tragic hiatus in Paris where he fails to promote the colonialist cause, he returns to the Sahara and outshines his past accomplishments, leading a ragtag band of Arab dissidents in some brilliant military maneuvers -- for which he won the French Legion of Honor. His newfound recognition also attracted a society maven who became his wife, and after his tour of duty has ended Saganne moves with her to the village where he was born. But the year is 1914 and Saganne's peaceful village idyll was not meant to endure -- he is again called off to war, and to his destiny. Even though the costuming, landscape, battles, and charisma of Depardieu as Saganne and Noiret as Colonel Dubreuilh are outstanding, and several subsidiary characters deliver emotionally compelling vignettes, the protagonists as an ensemble have not been scripted with much depth of character -- making the three-hour epic seem a bit too long in the end. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In another typical Jean-Paul Belmondo vehicle, the French action hero plays a policeman prone to advancing the cause of justice by any means necessary. On his agenda is a powerful drug cartel working out of Paris and Marseilles, with a drug lord (Henry Silva) who is essentially inaccessible -- but not immortal. Stunts (performed by Belmondo) and chase scenes on land and water enliven the story, but the scenes with Belmondo's love interest are rather marginal themselves. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Dear Inspector and Dear Detective were the English-language titles of Philippe De Broca's Tendre Poulet. Annie Girardot plays the old flame of Greek professor Philippe Noiret. The prof tries to rekindle the flames of passion, but Girardot seems curiously preoccupied. It turns out that she's a detective on the trail of a murderer. The film served as the basis for the 1979 American made-for-TV movie Dear Detective, starring Brenda Vaccaro and Arlen Dean Snyder. A DeBroca-directed sequel, Jupiter's Thigh, was filmed in 1979, again with Annie Girardot and Philippe Noiret. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tigre (Roger Hanin) is a French undercover agent sent to stop ex-Nazis in their attempt to take over Latin America. He is captured and flogged by henchmen for the group who assist in political revolutions with men and money. Marilyn Monroe-clone Margaret Lee co-stars in this routine spy thriller with plenty of violent fights and comic-book style action. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide