Marin Karmitz Movies

A young man who works in the shipyards as a dockworker is invited to stay with a friend in Paris. He decides to make a go of it in the big city and gets a job in an auto manufacturing plant, joining the union when the workers propose a takeover of the company. He begins to date a local girl, and things go well until the tedium of his job and blind allegiance to the worker's union begins to wear down his spirit. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Coup Pour Coup is a film about a worker's strike at a textile plant, and is written and enacted by the actual striking workers. This film was a collaborative and collective effort. Videotapes of upcoming scenes were discussed by the workers, and camera angles as well as dramatic refinements were agreed on before any film was exposed. Given that the film presents the worker's point of view and is a largely amateur effort, reviewers found it surprisingly effective as a dramatic piece. One interesting feature of the film, and of the strike itself, is that it was organized and led by women. While there had been male union leaders, they were bypassed or ousted for their lack of leadership, understanding, or negotiating skills. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

One year after director Yilmaz Guney escaped from a Turkish prison, he started shooting his film the Wall on the injustices of the military regime in Turkey and at the same time, director Patrick Blossier began shooting this documentary on the techniques used by Guney to elicit the best performances from his actors. Guney himself comes across as often angry and impatient; he slaps a young actor so as to make him cry for a scene and shows about as much warmth as December in Moscow. Unfortunately, none of this contributes to garnering sympathy for his anti-military cause. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this polemical look at a revolutionary released from prison and bent on getting back at the right-wing conservatives who got him into prison in the first place, director Romain Goupil uses a heavier hand than in his earlier, well-received film, Mourir a 30 Ans. There is a certain amount of stereotyping in the way the fascists and leftists look and act, something that may have worked against the director's portrayal of fascists in the police force, or idealized revolutionaries. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A stolen letter creates all sorts of trouble for the president of France in this political comedy. The letter is hidden inside the purse of a woman who was once lovers with the leader. Their union resulted in a son, but the president is unaware of this until she, who moved to the US to have her son, finally contacts him 10 years later. Naturally this creates problems for him as he is in a terrible marriage with a woman who doesn't love him, but still he is delighted and so takes the woman and his son to his palace in Versaille where they are hidden. Meanwhile the police begin looking for the troublesome letter. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Inspecteur Lavardin is a mellow, take-your-time Claude Chabrol effort of the 1980s, partly financed by French television. Jean Poiret had previously played the role of Inspector Jean Lavardin in the 1984 Chabrol film Poulet au Vinaigre (aka Cop au Vin). This story is built completely around the Lavardin character. The good inspector travels to a small coastal town to investigate the puzzling death of a well-known writer. In the course of his probings, Lavardin inadvertently uncovers several skeletons -- the kind that people keep hidden in their closets. Chabrol co-wrote the screenplay of Inspecteur Lavardin with Dominque Roulet. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Alain Resnais faithfully adapted his script for Melo from a 1929 play by Henry Bernstein--the first time that Resnais handled his own screenplay. Violinists and lifelong friends Pierre Arditi and Andre Dussolier have each found happiness in adulthood, but only Dussolier has become famous. Ardati leads a contented life with his wife, Sabine Azema, little suspecting that she is enamored of Dussolier. An abortive plan to murder her husband leads to Azema's suicide, but Ardati remains blissfully unaware of her infidelities. When the truth is revealed to Ardati, Dussolier honors the memory of Azema by insisting that no illicit romance ever occurred. One of the more "linear" of Resnais' works, Melo, filmed in 1986, was given a general American release three years later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Roland Wolf (Robin Renucci) poses as a reporter to interview a popular television personality (Philippe Noiret) he believes is responsible for the disappearance of his sister. The struggling actress had taken a job as a companion to the star's sickly ward Catherine (Anne Brochet). Roland discovers Catherine is being drugged by her benefactor who has stolen her inheritance and possibly committed murder. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The women in this story are the customers of amateur abortionist Isabelle Huppert. The time is 1941, and the place is a Nazi-occupied French town. Struggling to survive, Huppert turns to illegally terminating unwanted pregnancies for a hefty fee. As her income increases, Huppert moves her family from their grimy surroundings to a posh apartment, sharing her digs with her new friend, prostitute Marie Trintignant. Completely seduced by her affluent lifestyle, Huppert ignores her shell-shocked husband Francois Cluzet, preferring to dally with Nazi collaborator Nils Tavernier. Things take a disastrous turn after one of Huppert's "customers" dies and her disgruntled husband turns her over to the authorities. Story of Women was inspired by the real-life tale of Marie-Louise Girard, who in 1943 was executed by the Vichy Government, who'd declared abortion as a Crime Against the State because it diminished the number of potential soldiers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Taxi Blues is a ground-breaking Russian film, one of the first to examine the rifts between the old Soviet Union and the post-communist Russian society. The movie concerns the friendship of an independent, alcoholic Jewish jazz musician named Liocha (Piotr Nikolajevitch Mamonov) and Schlikov (Pyotr Zaitchenko) a stern, conservative cabdriver. After Liocha doesn't pay Schlikov for a fare one evening, the cab driver tracks the musician down and takes his saxophone as payment. Despite his initial treatment of Liocha, Schlikov becomes fascinated by the musician and offers him a bed in his apartment. Eventually, the two strike up a friendship and Liocha gets a job in the taxi depot in order to pay off his debt. However, their friendship turn sour when Schlikov's girlfriend becomes smitten with the musician and Liocha joins an American musician for a U.S. tour. When Liocha returns, rich and successful, he fights with his old friend, leading to a sorrowful conclusion. Taxi Blues received great critical acclaim and many awards, including director Pavel Lungin winning the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Literary critics long regarded Gustave Flaubert's iconic French novel Madame Bovary as unfilmable (despite several attempts by Vincente Minnelli and others to bring it to the screen), but Nouvelle Vague architect Claude Chabrol set out to definitively prove them wrong with this Oscar-nominated feature adaptation from 1991, starring Isabelle Huppert (The Lacemaker). Huppert stars as Emma Bovary, a woman whose happiness depends exclusively on elements outside of herself. She spends her days indulging in flights of fancy and endless romantic longings, emotionally estranged from her good-natured but ignorant husband Charles (Jean-François Balmer) a physician whom she married as an escape from her landowner father's farm. Her fate seems poised to change when she meets and falls hard for Rodolphe Boulanger (Christophe Malavoy) - a lover who takes her to bed and then vows to elope with her. Pinning all of her hopes on this, she invests in a traveling costume that she's unable to afford (rendering herself completely in debt with a local millner), and plans to skip town with Rodolphe when the monies come due. Alas, Rodolphe, as it turns out, never planned to follow through with the elopement plans, and promptly abandons Emma, leaving her to face the dire consequences of her foolish decisions. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

The first chapter in Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Three Colors" trilogy, Blue stars Juliette Binoche as Julie, the lone survivor of an automobile crash that killed her husband, a famed composer, and their only child. Despondent, Julie attempts suicide, but she cannot bring herself to take her own life. Instead, she sets about starting over, purging all remnants of her former existence in an attempt to sever her ties to the past. A piece in the trio of films loosely inspired by the colors of the French flag and their corresponding symbolic qualities, the basic focus of Blue is liberty. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide