When a woman is accused of murder, the investigation slowly reveals numerous political connections. Laubret, the court-appointed defense lawyer, does everything in his power to expose the truth.
Paul, a young idealist trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life, takes a job interviewing people for a marketing research firm. He moves in with aspiring pop singer Madeleine. Paul, however, is disillusioned by the growing commercialism in society, while Madeleine just wants to be successful. The story is told in a series of 15 unrelated vignettes.
Lyons, France. Michel Descombes is a watchmaker who lives alone with his teenage son Bernard. When the police visit and informs him that Bernard killed a man and is on the run with a girl, Michel realizes that he knew far less about his son than he thought.
A British agent's son is kidnapped and held for a ransom of diamonds. The agent finds out that he can't even count on the people he thought were on his side to help him, so he decides to track down the kidnappers himself.
Mary and Louis have been married for 10 years and have 2 children. Louis is a construction worker who, to support his wife and children in a comfort, works more and more. Mary asks Louis to spend more time with his family, but he replies that it is impossible. Marie makes the acquaintance of a former teacher of her son, he seems seduced by Marie who invites her over several times in the company of his children, his home ... The couple become unglued a little more when Louis meets a young prostitute. Can the couple manage to get through this?
Paula Nelson goes to Atlantic City to meet her lover, Richard Politzer, but finds him dead and decides to investigate his death. In her hotel room, she meets Typhus, whom she ends up knocking out. His corpse is later found in the apartment of David Goodis, a writer. Paula is arrested and interrogated. From then on, she encounters many gangsters.
The wife of an extremely jealous merchant is held hostage by a bank robber.
"Maine-Ocean" is the name of a train that rides from Paris to Saint-Nazaire (near the ocean). In that train, Dejanira, a Brazilian, has a brush with the two ticket inspectors. Mimi, another traveler and also a lawyer, helps her. The four of them will meet together later and live a few shifted adventures with a strange-speaking sailor (Mimi's client).
In a routine look at what it means to finally leave adolescence behind — even in one’s mature years — this series of mood swings and sequences focuses on two grown men. Francois (Jean Francois Stevenin, the director) and Leo (Yves Alonso) are old friends, and at one point they decide to go out and search for one of their childhood buddies, the brunt of several of their practical jokes. In true form, the men opt for playing yet another practical joke on their friend, but their plans backfire when his wife Helene (Carole Bouquet) comes into the picture instead. Her presence forces them to reconsider their shenanigans in a new light.
An unorthodox police commissioner investigates the suspicious death of a man run over by a train.
You're a provincial kid in Paris and suddenly you're the center of attention: Movie stars, famous directors and sexy women are doting on you because they all think you're the son of their long-dead legendary friend. You never knew your dad, but the facts of this famous guy's life suggest that he might have fathered you. Your mom tells you nothing. All the fuss makes you uncomfortable at first but soon you find it's rather fun to be the son of the famous Gascogne. And in the midst of it all you fall in love. It is, after all, springtime in Paris.
Alice, a young Portuguese woman, escapes from a psychiatric hospital where she is locked up under the orders of her father-in-law who intends to take away her inheritance. On her way to France, she falls victim to a truck driver who she kills to defend herself. A few moments after this murder she meets Bernie, a young boxer, who will take care of her, going so far as to hide her from the eyes of the police and the detectives in the pay of her stepfather. He is preparing for the title of world champion.
Nicole is a female attorney who is frustrated with the male-dominated world of provincial law. She embezzles money from a law firm and travels to Paris where she disguises herself as a man in hopes it will make a difference in her life and career. Nicole has two lesbian affairs and becomes a pimp for one of the women. She also has an affair with a man who indicates that he doesn't want a serious relationship. Nicole's loneliness leads her to the affairs as she continues the downward spiral into schizophrenia in this depressing psychological drama.
Two women work as entertainers and prostitutes to raise enough money for their dream home.
A jaded and charming police inspector is assigned along with his cheerful partner to a case involving the mysterious death and/or suicide of a wealthy entrepreneur. The chief suspect is his enchanting wife who was aware that her husband had a mistress. It is also possible that the dead man may be the victim of a radical terrorist group.
Loosely based on "4.50 from Paddington" by Agatha Christie.
Jean-Luc Godard's and Jean-Pierre Gorin's interpretation of the Chicago Eight / Chicago Seven trial, which followed the 1968 Democratic National Convention protest activities. Judge Hoffman becomes the character Judge Himmler (played by Ernest Menzer) and the defendants become a microcosms of the French Revolution.
In this retelling of the story of Hamlet, the young man is a soldier on leave to attend his widowed mother's marriage to his uncle - a marriage which is unpleasantly near in time to the death of his father. Every element of Shakespeare's tragic story is present, except that, this time, Dede refuses to kill anyone, no matter how persistent his father's frustrated ghost is.
The film tells the story of a group of pensioners desperate to visit Le Mont-Saint-Michel.
In the year 2222, a former drug dealer is kept in a state of hibernation. Reanimated, he tells his story. Leader in the narcotics market, his situation was prosperous until, during a political change, the government legalized its use.
The stage director of the play L’œuf de Pâquesis given the importante Molière award. Taking this reward for a bad joke, he thinks that a conspiracy mounts against him and decides to rewrite the play, transforming it into Molière’s La critique de l’École des femmes.
Charles Duchemin, a well-known gourmet and publisher of a famous restaurant guide, is waging a war against fast food entrepreneur Tri- catel to save the French art of cooking. After having agreed to appear on a talk show to show his skills in naming food and wine by taste, he is confronted with two disasters: his son wants to become a clown rather than a restaurant tester and he, the famous Charles Duchemin, has lost his taste!
Eve falls in love with Sébastien, one of the chefs in her husband's restaurant, but risks the scorn and contempt of her friends and relatives when she stands by her lover even after her spouse is diagnosed with an inoperable cancer.
In 1923, Albert Londres, the famous reporter, travels to the French penal colony in French Guyana. First, officers try to hide the truth, but leaded by his own instinct he begins an investigation alongside the authorities. He didn't expect to find such inhuman conditions. He meets a prisoner, Camille, and his wife, Claudia, who's in French Guyana to find a way to free her husband. He decides to help her.
A lawyer, her assistant, and a dentist witness the execution of a man in the middle of Paris and are forced to flee to escape the criminals. They find themselves in the middle of nowhere in the countryside... For their safety, these three city dwellers will have to live together and pretend to be farmers... Will they succeed, or will they be exposed?
In this surreal comedy, Tonio works very hard for every bit of ill-gotten cash he can get his hands on, but he remains a poor criminal in both senses of the word. He and his buddies Bruno and Hercule think they have the solution to their pocketbook woes. The body of St. Bernadette has been miraculously preserved from decay and is a central object of pilgrimage in the shrine where it is kept. Why not steal that and hold it for ransom? The criminal gang is well able to pull this coup off and are soon in possession of one perfectly preserved corpse and a very fancy coffin. It's too bad for them that the church seems to have a limitless supply of these and doesn't want the one they stole back. Bemused, the lads set the coffin adrift on the river, only to be followed by it as they drive back upriver. In the course of carrying out their criminal designs, these lovable lugs encounter a variety of eccentric characters.
Alain Cluny is Balthazar, a bumbling middle-aged intellectual who spouts off from time to time about leftist causes, usually to his current girlfriend. Then Edwarda (Bernadette Lafont), who is active in the political underground, comes into his life. From that point on, he begins to act on his beliefs. Edwarda's underground political action group stages a little drama to test Balthazar's commitment and reliability, putting him through an interrogation by what appear to him to be French secret police. Having passed this test, he is given a real assignment. This film is a comedy with elements of satire, and it explores the humor to be found in left-wing pretentiousness of all kinds. - Rovi
This fast-paced mystery is in part based on a novel by Yves Ellena and is at least equally based on the 1943 classic Le Corbeau, which in 1951 was produced in English by Otto Preminger as The Thirteenth Letter. In this movie, someone is using a pirate radio broadcast to dish the dirt on the lives of the elite of a small French town.
A young couple: Victor is a musician, Claire is a secretary in a publishing house. Their daily life seems so disappointing, so monotonous, that they begin to spend their time daydreaming, both creating their own imaginary world. At the office, she writes the story of an heroine's imaginary life. He collects material to compose an opera which glorifies the conquistadors.
A supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer preoccupations.
A murder at the Whisky Bar leads a Buddhist policeman on the trail of a strange deal that links the owner to a crooked politician. A zany, satirical detective story that denounces a certain milieu where politicians and crooks coexist. The politician, a drug dealer and employer of hired assassins, becomes the target of a blind hitman.
A fictionalized report from the Côte d'Azur. Preparing for vacation (diet and artificial tanning). The vacation route (a hitchhiker has her luggage stolen by a motorist; hitchhikers steal, rape and leave in their victims' cars...). "Dolce vita" in Saint-Tropez. The art of spending a vacation with a minimum of money (prostitution, cheating at gambling, pussies kept by old ladies...). Naturists on the Ile du Levant. Vacation club romance. Drugs (a girl gets stung and falls into a coma next to her friend, already dead). The end of a vacation (a young woman, ruined by her stay on the Riviera, indulges for a day in slaughterhouse prostitution to pay for her return).
Jim is a small child who lives in an inn run by his parents. The arrival of a strange captain to the Island they live will trouble his existence and tip him into an universe of adventures.
An old man in dressing gown and slippers is abandoned by his family on an area of highway while on vacation. He later finds himself in a hospital where a nurse, Gégène, calls him Mischka.
In spring 1976, a 19-year-old beauty, her German-born mother, and her crippled father move to the town of a firefighter nicknamed Pin-Pon. Everyone notices the provocative Eliane. She singles out Pin-Pon and soon is crying on his shoulder (she's myopic and hates her reputation as a dunce and as easy); she moves in with him, knits baby clothes, and plans their wedding. Is this love or some kind of plot? She asks Pin-Pon's mother and aunt about the piano in the barn: who delivered it on a November night in 1955? Why does she want to know, and what does it have to do with her mother's sorrows, her father's injury, this quick marriage, and the last name on her birth certificate?
A teacher is suspected of engaging in a 'special relationship' with a pupil. When said pupil disappears, the rumour gains momentum. Especially because two years earlier, another of the teacher's teenage pupils also disappeared.
The victim of a serious accident, Camille finds himself in a strange, huge, rehabilitation centre run by Professor Helpos. He soon teams up with a group calling themselves "the wreckers" and who make their own rules, ignoring those of the medical establishment.
This visually striking drama is taken from the classic Japanese novel Tales Of Genji by Marasaki Shikibu. Set in modern Portugal, Joao (Luis Miguel Cintra) is a left-wing political leader and ladies man with a bright future. His ex-wife Isabel (Manuela de Freitas) both loves and hates him as Joao plays on her wavering emotional state. He is sent to Italy to retrieve wayward family member Antonia (Caroline Chaniolleau), the beautiful young woman with a terrorist boyfriend. Joao is forced to recognize his feelings as the political and amorous climate changes around him.
In 1977, after working as an assistant director on several features, BETTY BLUE filmmaker Jean-Jacques Beineix directed the following short film about a man and his dog.
An unemployed worker illegally sets up a toy assembly line in his home where his friends and neighbors work.
Having escaped from prison Ristack contacts his partner, to organize an attack on a van full of gold. The heist goes well but each man is trying to keep all the loot for himself...
An almost blind writer moves to a hidden property in an Alpine village with a female friend, Renata. The two play sado-masochistic games including long recitals of elaborate texts. A neighbor, Serge, gets interested in the mysterious couple.
The whole intrigue is centered around carte-blanche documents kept in a vault. Whoever fills in the blank becomes the owner of a revue. Big money is involved. The nephew of the owner of the vault is trying to cheat his uncle and have his name in the documents. Everything is even more complicated because the manager of the bank has a finger in the pie, too. Who but a humble bank-teller (Pierre Richard) will ruin the scheme?
Philippe is a middle-aged painter, he lives with Annie : they have two kids. Just after they split up, Philippe meets Justine. He starts thinking about love, the relationship between former lovers..
A blind man, a returning safecracker and a recently released ex-con organize a heist of a prosthesis factory to get some platinum. But nothing will happen as planned.
Don Quichotte (Luchini) is a modern filmmaker with views on the perfect film. Sancho Pança (Risch) is systematically condradicting Quichotte, whose film materializes in front of them as he lists his ideas
Jean-Marie Fayard is a young examining magistrate in a large provincial french city. He belongs to that generation of judges who are endeavoring to re-adapt the notion of justice to our changing times. His methods are not agreeable to every one. Criticism and pressure are brought to bear upon him but he is aware of his value, professionally, and refuses to make any concessions. He follows an unwavering course. He uses dynamic methods and takes uncustomary initiatives. He behaves like a crusader, a battler, whence the nickname given him by the reporters : the sheriff.
Serge Morgan is a killer working for the American Mafia. After performing a contract in New York for his employers, he takes the plane back to Paris and, during the flight, he gets to know Jane, the rich daughter of an ambassador. Once in Orly Airport he gets seriously wounded by the men of French drug kingpin Henri Emery. He manages to escape them though and takes refuge at Jane's. Passion sets in between the killer and the young lady. As of then, sex will be intertwined with blood and death. For better or worse...
Nicolas, 13 years old, lives in a suburb north of Paris with his mother, a cleaning lady, and his older sister, a cashier in a supermarket. Left to his own devices, he and his friends have created a fearless gang that does not hesitate to travel to the capital to commit petty theft. The young boy, who attends a special education section, does not expect much from school. Everything changes with the arrival of a new teacher, who immediately seduces some of the students, including Nicolas, whom the young woman does not hesitate to welcome into her home to bring him up to speed. Nicolas makes lightning progress. But his momentum is broken by an event as painful as it is unexpected.
