Philippe Lefebvre Movies

The population of the City of Lights is reduced to two in this offbeat comedy from France. Gervais (Eric Judor) is a police detective who one morning discovers that the city of Paris has been mysteriously abandoned, with almost nobody to be seen. The only other person Gervais runs across happens to be Curtis (Ramzy Bedia), a wanted criminal Gervais has been tracking for some time. Even though there aren't any fellow officers on hand to help handle the arrest, Gervais is determined to capture Curtis anyway, especially since there isn't much else to do, and the two pursue one another through the empty streets (with Curtis occasionally giving chase in a race car). In time, Gervais and Curtis grow tired of shouting and running after one another and they begin to wonder if the bad karma they're generating has something to do with the empty streets. Seuls Two (aka Two Alone In Paris) was directed by Eric Judor and Ramzy Bedia, who also contributed to the screenplay as well as playing Gervais and Curtis; it was their first project behind the camera. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

OSS 117: Cairo -- Nest of Spies constitutes the eighth installment in a long-running series of movies about OSS 117 (the government code name for Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath) -- a French super-spy and European equivalent of James Bond. The creation of author Jean Bruce, OSS eventually starred in over 265 novels and seven cinematizations through 1970. The first seven film outings were sober and straight-faced; the eighth go-round (the first after a 38-year lapse) does a 180 to shamelessly poke fun of the rules established by the genre. A glib yet intelligent spoof, it joins the ranks of Our Man Flint (1965), Aghaye Hallou (1970), Mad Mission 3: Our Man from Bond Street (1984), and other international pictures that glibly satirize the subgenre made infamous to Americans by Bond; like Mad Mission 3, it even packs in an OSS 117 (Jean Dujardin) with a startling resemblance to Sean Connery. The film's comic conceit involves making OSS 117 arrogant, conceited, culturally insensitive, chauvinistic, and thoroughly moronic (he pretends that various cultural institutions and religious practices, for instance, are nonexistent if he is unfamiliar with them); yet the character somehow manages to slide through outrageously dangerous situations unscathed, time and again. The teaser prologue finds OSS 117 in Berlin, where he outwits the Nazis by stealing vital documents from them, hijacks an Axis plane in mid-nosedive, and saves himself and the craft at the last yawning moment. Ten years later, he journeys from Rome to Cairo, where he investigates the death of a fellow agent, posing as the proprietor of a chicken farm. His "side" activities during this jaunt involve hammering out a peace arrangement for the Middle East, keeping tabs on the Suez Canal, and monitoring the Russians. Jean-François Halin scripted the film, maintaining an utterly deadpan tone throughout; Michel Hazanavicius directed. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Like the American pictures Magnolia and Happy Endings, French helmer Nicole Garcia's ensemble drama Charlie Says interweaves a tapestry of mordant and miserable existences. Garcia zeroes in on six vice-ridden Gallic men, all generally average and unremarkable individuals, and several at the midpoints of their sorry lives. The characters include: Mathieu (Patrick Pineau), an artic researcher returning to the town where he grew up to host an important conference; Adrien (Arnaud Valois), a national celebrity notorious for losing a tennis match, who must now resume formal court training; small-town mayor Jean-Louis Bertagnat (Jean-Pierre Bacri) , who prepares to honor Mathieu at a town ceremony and bides his off time in a stormy extramarital affair with landscape gardener Severine (Sophie Cattani); ex-con Joss (Benoit Pooleverde), a man attempting to survive parole without drifting back into crime; pool worker Serge Torres (Vincent Lindon) , a husband and father who flirts dangerously with married Finnish co-worker Nora (Minna Haapkyla); and Serge's son, the Charlie of the title (Ferdinand Martin) who has Nora's husband as a teacher but consents to ably assisting his father in the execution of an affair with Nora by falsely indicating his father's whereabouts to his mother. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

A mystery writer ends up on a busman's holiday after someone steals a valuable statue from the French hotel where she is staying. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Based on the real-life assassination of a judge in Marseilles in 1981, this fictionalized account of how he came to die lacks the substance and drama that must have characterized the actual story as it happened. Judge François Müller (Jacques Perrin) was transferred from Vosges in northwest France to preside at the court in Marseilles, and when he arrives, he soon finds out what everyone else already knows: a certain Antoine Rocca (Daniel Duval) is the head of a large drug cartel centered in the city. The judge joins forces with a local police inspector, and manages to arrest Rocca for a short time for carrying an unlicensed weapon. Intent on eliminating the drug lord, Judge Müller goes to Palermo to search out evidence. With more dramatic build-up and an in-depth probing of the judge's own fears and motivations, this re-creation of a recent tragedy would have had more of an impact on audiences, especially in France where the details of the story were already known. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide