Aure Atika Movies

A young woman abandons her child out of love in this emotional drama from France. Nina (Judith Chemla) is a single mother who is deeply devoted to her son, five-year-old Enzo (Max Baissette de Malglaive). Nina is also homeless, and has grown weary of dealing with government service agencies that are supposed to help her regain control of her life but instead just make her jump through hoops. One day, Nina happens to meet Damien (Guillaume Depardieu), who lives in an isolated cottage in the forests of Versailles. Damien offers to let Nina and Enzo stay with him for the night, and before the dawn, Nina has run away. Nina's plan is to use some time on her own to put her life back on track and reclaim Enzo once she has a job and a place to stay. However, Damien is a former criminal with a short temper and little use for others, and while he feels genuine compassion for Nina and Enzo, he's convinced he's not cut out to be the child's guardian. The longer Damien is with Enzo, the more he comes to care for the boy, so he sets out to mend fences with his dad (Patrick Descamps), who he hasn't spoken with in years, in hopes of giving the boy the sort of father figure he deserves. Versailles was the first directorial project for veteran screenwriter Pierre Schoeller. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Stephane Allagnon's crime comedy Before the Storm stars Jonathan Zaccai as Frank, a tech worker assigned to fix the aged computer system of a store after a weather incident knocked it out. During the work, he uncovers a piece of code that embezzled money from the company. When the number one suspect turns up dead, Frank finds himself trying to piece together who is responsible with the help of some quirky locals. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

A novelist, an actress, and a struggling young singer all attempt to make their mark in modern day Paris in director Marc Fitoussi's cynical entertainment industry satire. Bertrand (Denis Podalydes) is a French literary professor whose students all know that he is shacked up with pretty math teacher Solange (Valerie Benguigui) despite the couple's best efforts to keep their relationship under the radar. Though no one in the school much cares for Bertrand's prose, self-flagellating student Frederic (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet) is the one notable exception. Meanwhile, as Bertrand struggles to deliver his second novel, recent big city arrival Cora (Emilie Dequenne) finds that her fondness for outmoded songwriters may be having an adverse effect on her career trajectory. While Cora struggles to make ends meet by working at a popular chain steakhouse, even this attempt to remain afloat ultimately proves disastrous. Somewhere in another part of town, embittered actress Alice (Sandrine Kiberlain) resents the fact that she is consistently passed over for "real" film roles after accepting work as an anime voiceover artist. Yet despite the fact that Alice resents her drama school classmate Annabella (Camille Japy) due to the latter's success on the legit stage, Annabella has her own problems as evidenced by her troubled relationships with her nephew and sister. Later, the engineer for Alice's dubbing session eventually works up the muster to speak her mind, and Cora begins to sense that her luck is finally turning after a chance encounter with veteran songwriter Joseph Costals (Jean-Pierre Kalfon). ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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, Rovi

French filmmaker Emilie Deleuze directs the psychological drama Mister V. Research scientist Lucas (Mathieu Demy) is an uptight man who studies the movement of horses. His crooked brother Luigi (Patrick Catalifo) buys a stallion named Mister V. as part of an insurance scam, but the horse ends up killing him. While the stable hand wants to have the horse put down, Lucas shows up to train the horse himself, even though he's actually afraid of horses. In the process, he also warms to his widowed sister-in-law Cecile (Aure Atika). Mister V. was shown at the 2003 Locarno International Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

A man discovers he's no longer as close to his ear as he once was in this absurdist comedy. Jeff (Sacha Bourdo) is minding his own business when a phonograph record tossed from a passing car accidentally cuts off his ear. The ear falls into traffic, gets stuck on the windshield of another vehicle, and begins a long, strange journey, passing from car to car and hand to hand across the country. Jeff, however, can still hear whatever his separated ear is picking up, and is trying to follow the sounds in hopes of catching up with his former body part. However, a doctor (Marie-France Pisier) warns him he only has a few hours to find his ear, otherwise reattachment will be impossible; in the meantime, Jeff's former girlfriend wastes several of his precious minutes with a discussion about the notion of giving their relationship another try. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this broadly comic variation on the old saw of the female scientist who is beautiful when she takes her glasses off, anthropologist Cecile (Judith Godreche) has spent some time tracking what she believes to be a lost tribe only to find out that they're really just the employees of a firm with a lousy record on environmental issues. Stuck for a new project, Cecile gets the brainstorm of a scientific study of the contemporary "bimbo" tribe, and soon starts dressing herself up like a sleaze in short skirts and midriff-baring blouses in order to study the habits of these women. However, Cecile's bimbo disguise is so effective that Laurent (Gerard Depardieu), the head of her department, doesn't recognize her -- and finds himself infatuated with the newly flashy-looking Cecile. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, Rovi

In this French box-office smash, director Thomas Gilou once again trains his sights on working-class immigrants living in metropolitan Paris, as he did with Black Mic-Mac. This time the subjects are the Sephardic Jews working in the garment district of Sentier. Eddie Vuibert (Richard Anconina) is an unemployed man who gets a job working in the stock room of a wholesale fabric dealer because the owner, Victor Benzakem (Richard Bohringer), believes that Eddie is Jewish, just like him. The opportunistic Eddie owes his job to this mistaken identity, and he does his best to preserve it, comically navigating the dangerous waters of learning strange customs and behavior. Eddie is promoted to a salesman and tries to romance Victor's daughter Sandra (Amira Casar), but she is involved with another fabric dealer, a corrupt man. Eddie must prove himself worthy on his own terms. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

After trying a job as a stripper in a Barcelona carnival, Eva (Aure Attika) is ready for something new, so she heads over to France and becomes the roommate of a gay American artist (Phillip Bartlett) and works as the housewife for two wealthy older homosexuals (Claude Chabrol and Jean-François Balmer. After she gets settled, she takes a job at a government office for a while but then decides to have a child, which her obliging roommate makes with her the old fashioned way. He then returns to his usual preference, while Eva explores becoming an artist herself. From time to time in this easygoing comedy, Eva's similarly independent and quirky mother (Bernadette Lafont) shows up. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi