Gérard Jugnot Movies

The tale of this movie is familiar enough, Sheherazade (Catherine Zeta-Jones) has been married to a ruler (Thierry Lhermitte) who wants many wives, but only one at a time. Consequently, as soon as he has bedded them, he has them put to death. In most retellings, the girl staves off this unfortunate conclusion by putting off the connubial event for a thousand and one nights, telling irresistable stories instead. In this one, she gets hold of a magic lamp and acquires a genie named Jimmy Genius (Gerard Jugnot) from the 20th century, who helps her escape and avoid recapture a thousand and one ways, by providing her with airplanes, cars, and other twentieth-century magical devices. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Bayard (Remi Martin) is a lowly squire who joins the army of King Charles (Patrick Timsit) after he is rejected by the noblewoman Blanche de Savoie (Anne-Gisel Glass). Bellabre (Gerard Jugnot) is the army captain who trains Bayard for the proposed invasion of Naples. Bayard returns a conquering hero to win the heart of Blanche, who defies the newly crowned King Louis XII (Martin Lamotte) and the Machiavellian Scottomayor (Roland Giraud) to marry her heroic soldier. Sight gags and parodies abound in this comedy that contains some of the grim humor of Monte Python And The Holy Grail. ~ Dan Pavlides, 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

Gaetan (Michel Serrault) is a television comic whose jokes have kept his program alive, but in more recent times, his senior gag writers have not had their hand on the pulse of his changing audience. A series of circumstances bring two young cafe-theater comedy writers to the rescue (Thierry Lhermitte and Gerard Jugnot), partially due to Gaetan's efforts. The new material is so successful that Gaetan is offered the lead in a serious feature-length movie, and if he had any hesitation about the venture, his wife squelched it with visions of a higher social and economic standing for them both. But the project does not go exactly as planned, and before he knows it, Gaetan runs into trouble. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Much of the suspense is excised from this ordinary comic "whodunit" by revealing too much about the protagonists before their own characters betray themselves through their actions. Barbara (Jane Birkin) marries Julien (Sami Frey) a charming and sexy man. Barbara's old flame Paul (Gérard Jugnot) is highly suspicious of Julien. It seems Julien's previous two wives died under dubious circumstances and he collected a wad of insurance money as a result. Paul cannot ignore his misgivings, and so he follows Barbara and Julien to Morocco on their honeymoon, intent on preventing any harm to the woman he still loves. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this standard human interest comedy, Susan Berlanger (Kristy McNichol) has been crippled since a child and has to wear a leg brace in order to get around, but that does not in any way prevent Sam (Robert Carradine) and several other men from being very attracted to her. Susan is a professional flautist with a ballet-company orchestra and is given a chance to travel to Europe for a concert tour, which she is more than happy to accept. Since she has doubts about relationships (do these men feel sorry for her?), she puts a cast on her leg and goes to a ski resort to find out what it is like to be treated "normally" by others. Once there, she meets a captivating photographer (Michael Ontkean) and falls in love -- but does not tell him the truth about her leg. Making matters even worse, a wealthy Frenchman courting Susan's roommate at the resort is an amputee -- he lost a leg in an automobile accident. Sooner or later, Susan will have to come to grips with her deception, her forthcoming marriage, and her interest in the photographer. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this uneven take-off on some reluctant resistance fighters in World War II, a family of musicians find themselves the unwilling hosts of a segment of the German High Command when their Paris mansion is taken over by the occupying forces. What happens next is a series of individual skits, cameo appearances, and zany interludes that are not necessarily as strung together as they are strung out. Characters include: Adolph Hitler's melodious half-brother whose singing style is hilariously close to that of Julio Iglesias, a "good" German officer, stereotypical of any of those found in post-World War II movies, and a woman who provides the comedy in a 1970s television talk show when she expounds on what really happened in the Paris villa back when. It is the acting which carries the day for this film, more than the actual script or cinematic development. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The physical imperfections of Bonnie (Anemone), a woman trying to work her way up the ladder at a radio station, do not stop her from going after Ferdinand (Gerard Jugnot), a reticent, bald, and mild fellow who at first resists Bonnie's overtures, but then slowly seems to change his mind. At parties in France in the 1950s, there was "an American quarter hour" (the French title of this film) when women asked men to dance. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The tendency for a life of crime to continue unabated is a part of this conventional crime comedy by director Jean-Marie Poire. When Adrien (Victor Lanoux) gets out of the slammer and heads home to his wife and kids, everything goes wrong. First, his wife is living with a deadbeat bus driver, secondly, his kids need straightening out, and thirdly, his old buddies are trying to silence him for good. These associates do not intend to hand over his share of the heist that sent him to prison. Finally fed up with it all, Adrien plans to burglarize the home of the head honcho and confiscate his loot on his own. That caper is clever yet it does not exactly turn out as he expected. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Bertin (Victor Lanoux) has accidentally killed his wife during an argument. He is the owner of a tannery which employs most of the inhabitants of the town he lives in. Rather than subject himself to the indignities of a police inquiry, he attempts to cover up the killing by saying that she has left him. At first, his tale is believed, because he has been openly seeing another woman who is pregnant with his child (and heir). Later, a judge magistrate (the French lawman with responsibility for criminal investigations) discovers the woman's corpse, and puts Bertin on trial for murder. The factory owner is determined to be acquitted, and he blackmails the townspeople so that the trial turns out to suit him. He wins his freedom, but loses his mistress, who is thoroughly repulsed. This drama is based on the novel The Lesser Evil by Jean Laborde. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Two frowsty middle-aged men, cousins, live and work together. In this ironic satire/drama, they are cowardly, tricky and mean-spirited, but at least they have each other. When they take to testing the alarm system of the bank that they work in after what is for them a particularly scary moment, their boss sends them away on a holiday. They manage to pick up and seduce a pretty hitchhiker before discovering that she is a runaway minor with a reward pending for her return. They bring her back to her family, collect the reward, and get told off by the girl before returning to their homes. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this satire, Coluche plays an inept king of France who is continually in danger of overthrow or murder by his scheming court and is kept on the throne by the efforts of his Musketeers, who also serve by wringing extra taxes out of the already hard-pressed population. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide