Tom Novembre

Giuseppe (Paolo Villaggio) takes his blind seven-year-old granddaughter Carla (Francesca Pipoli) from Puglia to his native Geneva. Giuseppe wants to call in an old debt in order to pay for an eye operation for the girl, and the man he needs to find in order to do so is Gaston (Jean-Luc Bideau), with whom he worked for three decades. However, when Giuseppe arrives in Geneva he finds Gaston residing in a sanitarium and his once-profitable company in economic shambles. As Giuseppe becomes reacquainted with his old friend, various revelations surface about his background and his relationship with Gaston's wife (Marie-Christine Barrault). ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

Acclaimed Belgian novelist Jean-Philippe Toussaint drew attention to his directorial talents in 1990 with a remarkable satire on modern life, Monsieur. His third feature, La Patinoire, is about a film director who is shooting a highly symbolic film called 'Dolores' at an ice rink. He has hired a Lithuanian ice hockey team with which he is having enormous communication problems. His actors all have inflated egos, his film crew is made up of fools, and there is a politician on his back. But he must finish the film, no matter what, in time for the Venice Film Festival. A black comedy which is applicable to all absurd situations of life, but particularly those associated with the film industry, La Patinoire is a clever satire from beginning to end, including its title. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide

This British-Dutch-Luxembourgian co-production is "based on characters created by John Landis" for his An American Werewolf in London (1981). In the opening, a man is seen under attack, almost managing an escape from the Parisian sewers before an unseen creature pulls him back. Meanwhile, tourist Andy (Tom Everett Scott) is seeing the sights of Paris with his pals Brad (Vince Vieluf) and Chris (Phil Buckman). When Serafine (Julie Delpy) leaps off the Eiffel Tower just before Andy is about to do a bungee-jump, he executes a mid-air rescue. She vanishes into the night, leaving Andy intrigued -- and also unaware that she is the offspring of the couple (Jenny Agutter, David Naughton) seen 16 years earlier in An American Werewolf in London. Andy tracks her down, asks for a date, attends a party, and winds up in her bed. When he awakens, he has toothmarks on his leg and is informed that he's making a transformation into a werewolf, confirmed by his sudden taste for rare steaks. Serafine explains that her stepfather (seen in the film's opening scene) had been working on a drug to control her werewolf transformations. Beneath a full moon, the lycanthropic love story continues. Filmed in Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Paris, and New York, with special effects mainly from California's Santa Barbara Studios. Werewolves were created by combining prosthetic devices and animatronics with computer-generated creatures. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

This large, sprawling comedy directed by Robert Altman concerns a variety of romantic and personal intrigues that intersect against the backdrop of Paris's annual "Pret-a-Porter" fashion extravaganza. With 31 principal characters and a number of cameos from well known models, designers, actors and actresses, there's far too much going on to describe the film in a limited space, but Julia Roberts and Tim Robbins get stuck in a hotel room together, Danny Aiello wears a dress, Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni reignite their old passion (or at least try to), Stephen Rea humiliates a number of female journalists, Kim Basinger often looks dumbfounded, and Lyle Lovett plays a Texan (talk about imaginative casting!). Originally called Pret-a-Porter, this underwent a last-minute title change when the distributor discovered very few Americans understood what the French phrase means, with the English translation taking its place. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this murder farce, a hitchhiker lopes into one of France's decaying industrial towns where unemployment is much higher than the national average (about ten percent). Still, the locals seem cheerful enough. When he gets to town, he sees most of the inhabitants are dressed up for a masquerade. He is horrified to witness what he believes is a murder. The victim was a pharmacist, and when the hitchhiker tries to investigate the murder, he discovers that nearly the whole town has agreed to consider him as the chief suspect, for reasons that have to do with a medical supplies scam. Still, the fact that more murders keep happening eventually leads to an investigation headed up by someone from outside the town, and then things start to get really lively. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

From director Bernardo Bertolucci, The Sheltering Sky is a filmed adaptation of the novel of the same name by Paul Bowles. Debra Winger and John Malkovich star as Kit and Port Moresby, a married American couple who globetrot to North Africa in the late '40s with the hopes of re-sparking their love and adding some zest to their lackluster lives. Along for the ride is the pair's friend George Tunner (Campbell Scott), who soon begins having an affair with Kit. As they struggle through the numbing heat of Africa amidst the sudden love triangle, each of the trio sees his and her beliefs and lives challenged. The Sheltering Sky earned a Best Director nomination for Bertolucci at the 1991 Golden Globe Awards. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide

Monsieur (Dominique Gould) has been cheerfully living at the family residence of his girlfriend, whose parents inexplicably accept this arrangement. Nonetheless, when his girlfriend brings a new boyfriend home to live with her, he goes out and gets an apartment. The apartment house is managed by a strange bullying character, who has Monsieur do his typing for him on weekends, while an assortment of odd characters parade in and out of his apartment. Monsieur accepts all this passively, but with good grace, and by the end of the film it looks as though something good will come of it all. This odd, black and white film is the second feature by novelist-director Jean-Philippe Toussaint. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Amanda Weber (Catherine Deneuve) is a museum employee who seeks to discover how and why her nephew (Tom Novembre) was murdered in this dull thriller. She knows her nephew was witness to a government project in which a busload of tourists were killed by a mysterious poisonous gas. Alex (Richard Bohringer) is a villainous government agent with orders to kill anyone with knowledge of the cover-up. Amanda soon becomes a target for the callous veteran assassin. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

A long parade of actors and actresses pop up in an unconnected series of skits, vignettes, and sight gags in this comedy anthology by Jean Curtelin. Among the sketches performed is one with Jean Carmet playing a man from the sticks woefully burdened with the challenge of getting through a dog food commercial on less than one tank of intelligible French. Another skit shows a silent duel between an airport custodian and an automatic door, while another with the renowned Michel Galabru sets up a strange teacher-student exchange. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This light romantic comedy is set up as a film-within-a-film, and features Francois Cluzet as Ferdinand, a screenwriter and director who has been in the business since he debuted as a child actor. (The same can be said of this film's director and co-scripter, Didier Haudepin). Ferdinand is working on a play about a young actor and his problems, but at the same time, he is trying to iron out his own problems. His beloved Elsa (Christine Pascal) has just left him and he cannot stop himself from writing a subplot dealing with his troubled romantic life. This sets off his producer, and so Ferdinand had better come up with a solution to his plot and his personal life soon. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide