Anne Parillaud

Marcello (Marcello Mastroiano) has worked hard all his life to achieve a certain standing and success as a lawyer in Rome. He is pleased to be able to offer the fruits of his success to his son Michele (Massimo Troisi), and is perplexed and distressed that his unambitious son has no interest in any of these things. Michele is serving a term in the Italian military in the port town of Civitavecchia, and Marcello is visiting him there. Here he meets Michele's salty girlfriend Loredana (Anne Parillaud). The father and son share some meals and explore their differences. Though at first it appears that these two men will not be able to tolerate one another, they eventually decide to live and let live. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Adam Coleman Howard wrote, directed, and stars in this gallows-comedy misfire as Ari Rose, an unsuccessful would-be actor whose treatment by Hollywood has driven him quite mad. He falls for a beautiful woman named Helen-Catherine (Anne Parillaud from La Femme Nikita and Innocent Blood) but strangles her when she rejects him. Quite demented, Ari takes the dead woman home, makes love to her corpse, and comes to the belief that she is still alive and very much in love with him. Soon, he's taking her around in public without anyone seeming to notice her condition. Indeed, in what was probably intended as the film's satiric highlight, Ari takes Helen-Catherine's body to an audition where her supposed intensity lands her the role. If any of this sounds remotely amusing, it isn't, and at 108 minutes takes an unfunny situation to nearly epic depths of tasteless boredom. What is more astonishing than the fact that this pedantic, necrophilic take on Weekend at Bernie's was made at all is the quality of the supporting cast. Amanda Plummer (who was in the equally perverse Hysteria the same year), Emily Lloyd, Val Kilmer, Famke Janssen, and Seymour Cassel are among the actors far too talented for this dreck, and it isn't so much the subject matter which is at fault. Certainly Very Bad Things and Dead-Alive, among other films, have proven that tasteless material can be funny, and even -- as in the wonderfully morbid The Loved One -- satirical. The real problem here is that Adam Coleman Howard is equally inept in all three of his capacities on this film. His script is poor (satirizing Hollywood even less incisively than the wretched Burn, Hollywood, Burn), his direction is hamfisted and self-indulgent, and his onscreen persona is completely devoid of charisma or interest. It is usually the case that when tasteless subject matter is handled poorly, it seems even more offensive than it really is. In this case, however, it is handled so poorly as to merely provoke yawns. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

A small man with a big story examines the facts of his life in this drama. As Frank Bois enjoys the success of his first novel, he finds himself looking back on his highly unusual life. Frank's mother Bernadette (Anne Parillaud) was a French woman who, after the death of her parents and several close friends in World War II, smuggled herself aboard an Allied troop ship sailing to Ireland, exchanging sexual favors for silence among the soldiers who discovered her on board. A kind-hearted customs agent, Jack Kelly (Gabriel Byrne), allowed Bernadette to enter Ireland, and they soon became lovers, even though she was already carrying the child of one of the soldiers from the ship. Bernadette soon gave birth to young Frankie (Alan Pentony), who suffered from dwarfism. As he grew older, Frankie fell for Jack's daughter Emma (Georgina Cates), who clearly didn't care for him, while Jack generously shared his knowledge of astronomy with Frankie. Eventually, Bernadette encountered Terry Klout (Matt Dillon), an American soldier from the troop ship, who offered to marry her. Bernadette and Frankie accompanied Terry to his home in Texas, but both mother and son felt like fish out of water in the American West, and they returned to the Irish home they came to love. A sadder but wiser Bernadette eventually committed suicide, and Frank began to draw upon his life experiences as he put pen to paper for his first book. Based on the novel The Dork of Cork by Chet Raymo, Frankie Starlight was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Gangsters is the directorial debut of veteran writer and actor Olivier Marchal, who spent ten years as a police detective in France. Frank (Richard Anconina) is captured and interrogated by the police, who want him to reveal the location of a vaulable briefcase. Flashbacks tell the story of the missing briefcase, in which Frank and Little Claude (Jean-Louis Tribes) are present during a violent burglary in a nightclub. Anne Parillaud (from La Femme Nikita) plays the fearless prostitute Nina. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide