It is the early 1300's and the treasury of France, under the rule of Philippe IV (Philippe le Bel or Philippe the Beautiful), is empty. The king decides the only solution is to raid the treasures of the Knights Templar (amongst others) and concocts various charges of treason, heresy and deviance against the Knights and their Grand Master Jacques de Molay. Having confessed under torture to the crimes of which he is accused, de Molay is condemned to be burned at the stake. With his dying breath he curses the king, the king's advisor (Guillaume de Nogaret), the pope (Pope Clement V) and the thirteen succeeding generations of their families. There follows one of the most dramatic periods in French history, half a century of political intrigue, murder, treason, war and famine, which ultimately culminates in the 100 Years War.
Although living a comfortable life in Salon-de-Provence, a charming town in the South of France, Julie has been feeling depressed for a while. To please her, Philippe Abrams, a post office administrator, her husband, tries to obtain a transfer to a seaside town, on the French Riviera, at any cost. The trouble is that he is caught red-handed while trying to scam an inspector. Philippe is immediately banished to the distant unheard of town of Bergues, in the Far North of France...
Santa doesn't want to retire, but rules are rules and he must train someone to replace him. The lucky winner, to be chosen from among millions of children, must be named Nicholas, be an orphan and have a pure heart. On the other side of the planet, there is a little boy who is a perfect match, but his lack of self-confidence and fear of heights make him a poor contestant. Will Santa agree to step down, and help his apprentice take his place?
On the occasion of Jean Paul Gaultier's 40-year career and his show "Fashion Freak Show" at the Folies Bergère, France 2 has given carte blanche to the most famous French couturier of the world who has created for the first time a great show of varieties fully immersed in his universe. Jean Paul Gaultier who, in his childhood, dreamed while watching the variety shows of Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier, takes the reins of this great entertainment mixing music and fashion.
A seemingly simple taxi ride across Paris evolves into a profound meditation on the realities of the driver, whose personal life is in shambles, and his fare, an elderly woman whose warmth belies her shocking past.
Marie (and her three fathers) are taking A-levels. Marie passes. She spends the summer in the country with her mother, Sylvia, who has returned from America with her Californian husband who has two sons. Marie falls in and out of love for the first time in front of her alarmed fathers, who see Marie's innocence slipping away at frightening speed, and their relationships with the two women become even more complicated.
On a mission to loosen up, a miser's sets about buying a house in the country for his family.
A young woman neglected by her mother, who prefers her dog, plunges into a totally crazy dream. She imagines herself getting rid of this unwanted dog in the company of her bizarre driver.
A bourgeois couple, modern yet conventional. One night by accident, a young prostitute barges into their lives. Hounded down, beaten up, threatened, she will continue to struggle, with the help of a well off lady, first for her survival-her resurrection-then for her dignity and freedom. Stormy encounters for everyone involved.
A valet wants to marry his beloved who tries to seduce Count Almaviva, his master.
At the altar where he is marrying Séverine, the groom, Antoine, gets his first glimpse of her mother, Léa, and suffers what the French call a coup de foudre which we know as love at first sight.
Jacqueline and Richard, a couple in their eighties, return to the hotel where they spent their first night of love sixty-five years ago. In that same room, they rediscover memories of the past as they retrace their shared love life. Little by little, we understand the true purpose of this pilgrimage. Faced with the disease that relentlessly gains ground, they have decided not to leave each other and to leave together, with dignity.
The Director of an international banknote printing institute, mutilated by the face of the Great War, Frank Davres, falls in love with a young woman, Jeanne, admirably beautiful, but blind. He marries her. For her, he ruins himself and comes to issue counterfeit banknotes. The young woman does everything to make people forget her infirmity. One day, following an operation, she recovers her sight and notices the physical and moral ugliness of her husband. She hides her cure until the day when Frank, taken by the police, kills one of his accomplices and commits suicide. Jeanne leaves to join a friend with whom she was performing in a circus.
A picture of humankind in Paris: singers, shows, social gatherings, businessmen, nightclub barmen, bums, shoppers.
During a crossing, Professor Rabas, a famous tamer, meets a certain Raymonde whom he brings back with him to his circus. The presence of the young woman leads to disagreement between Rabas and his younger brother, Léo; she suggests to the latter to enter the cage of the untamed lions, where he is injured. Rabas and Leo understood the lesson; Raymonde is hunted like an evil beast, and calm returns to the circus.
A famous comedian decrees that his fortune will go to whoever collects as many pop star autographs as quickly as possible. When he dies, two cousins embark on the race for signatures.
Panorama of the programs and hosts who made the heyday of radio in the 1950s.
In Bourganeuf, an old maid, Charlotte Bourdier, confesses to Marie Chassagne that she has forged a sentimental intrigue by correspondence with the presenter of the Radio Circus, Zappy Max. Marie agrees to meet him when he comes, but she in turn falls in love with him, who confesses his love to her.
Follows the intertwined stories of five couples and their entourage, living in the same opulent Parisian building, over the four seasons of the year.
A singer tries to get her daughter out of the grip of a guru by becoming a member of his cult herself.
By dint of inventing stories, a boy neglected by his mother comes to lead a double life.
In the early 1950s, the popular radio show "La Kermesse aux Étoiles", hosted by the famous Jean Nohain, mixing lottery games and performances of various artists, will be disrupted by the adventures of a man and his fiancée seeking to recover a dangerous bottle of perfume (explosive) which was unfortunately mixed with the prizes to be won ...
Lucie was supposed to sleep with the jeweler but hadn’t foreseen the alarm. The jeweler noticed the scheme and attacked Lucie’s accomplice Noémie. Lucie defended her, pushed her and the jeweler fell , stunned. Thinking to have killed her, Lucie goes to see a lawyer, who will take her under her wing.
While France is occupied, Louise (70) tries not to give in to despair and continues to open the doors of her small provincial bar every day. The militiamen leaning on the bar are customers like any others. Everyone turns a blind eye when Louise buys from the black market to serve a kitchen worthy of its name. But in early 1943, on a cold January day, an English paratrooper landed in a tree not far from the bar. Louise, always fearless, comes to his aid. With Emile's help, she hides the newcomer in her cellar. Without realizing it, Louise has just joined the resistance...
Melanie can't stand her life anymore, a source of too much suffering. One day she decides to end it all and sets off in a stolen car on a suicidal race on the highway. But at a gas station, a somewhat eccentric old woman discreetly slips into the vehicle. Garance has a habit of randomly taking a seat in other people's cars, with only her suitcase and a binder bearing the title "The Flight Ceremony of the Northern Gannet". Melanie's suicidal plans are thwarted by this nuisance, whom she does not hesitate to inveigh against. But anger soon gives way to affection.
Colette Valier wears her sixty years with petulance. She wants to help her grandson financially, who is setting up a modest business and intends to take advantage of her deceased husband's stock portfolio to recover funds. To her great surprise, she discovers that the investments made at the time are now worthless. Determined to assert her rights, she goes to Paris and asks for help from an old friend, Charles. Living with her daughter Véronique, who is overexcited by Parisian life, Colette discovers a turbulent family, a careerist and absent husband, agitated children and a depressive permanent guest, Arnaud. In this electric atmosphere, Colette begins her investigation.
A retired woman befriends her neighbor without suspecting that it is her own daughter whom she abandoned at birth.
Three nuns are caught up in the midst of Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
An elderly lady is visited each month by her good-for-nothing nephew who relieves her of her regular pension. When he appears again one winter day accompanied by two hideous but eager pals who start roasting a freshly captured piglet on her back lawn before maltreating her cat and retreating to sleep in the sauna, she can no longer stand it. So at dawn she packs up to flee into town, where she moves in with an old friend who gives her consolation and advice.
1914, a small village of the Marne. Charming and woken up, Madeleine, said the Madelon, who works in the coffee(café) of his father, Tourlourou, account of numerous pretenders. To the rich Antoine Pichot, she prefers corporal Beauguitte. When the war bursts, she(it) searches for the latter.
An elderly woman, whose best friend has died, meets her friend's favorite nephew to give him his inheritance. The nephew is rather different than expected.
France is at the heart of Madonna's life. She is inspired by French culture and its values and has surrounded herself with French artists for many years. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Queen of Pop's career, this film revisits the close and unique bond between Madonna and France and features testimonials from close collaborators and French friends who have helped create her unique artistic universe: Maripol, Jean Paul Gaultier, Julien d'Ys, Nicolas Huchard, and Marion Motin. Today's artists such as Florence Foresti, Leïla Slimani, Victor Weinsanto and HollySiz talk about the influence of this emancipating figure, which extends far beyond music.
Author of the best-selling crime novel Le Poulet se mange froid (Chicken Eats Cold) under the pseudonym Sam O'Connor, Inspector Bourdieux's daughter, Agnès, is unwillingly drawn into the gangster ring by two small-minded young misfits, Dédé and Juju. She's not insensitive to the charms of M. Paul, a false kingpin who is in fact a son of a good family and a thrill-seeker. Planning a heist at the home of one of Paul's snobbish friends, she arrests the real Sam O'Connor, an escaped convict, with the help of her father. Then she and Paul confess their love for each other.
Augustin Robustal and his wife Lilane run the riverside café "Au joyeux gardon" and if the "gardon" (roach) is happy, the owners of the establishment are not as business is bad. Indeed the place is almost deserted except by four faithful patrons, Francis, a garage owner, Pivois, a man with a modest private income, Loulou, a radio technician and Boudoux, an undertaker. Now, the Robustals employ a fanciful but gifted waiter, Hippolyte. This one happens to be infatuated with Liliane, so much so that one day he takes out a life insurance in her favor. The four regulars' reaction is instant: they offer Robustal to execute Hippolyte, in exchange for a commission. But the trouble (at least for them!) is that Hippolyte is indestructible.
Joanna Martin, a mid-life journalist, is investigating a marriage agency organizing white marriages. She uses her sister's identity to infiltrate.
Fabien has been a manager for years. Overnight, this 40 year old man is unemployed. His wife Daniela pushes him to recover an apartment he had made available to his mother, Marie-Louise. But the woman is not at all ready to leave the apartment, especially not since she now has a new boyfriend, André.
The portrait of a woman who remembers. Sheila tells the story of Sheila, without concessions or evasions. Her childhood, her parents, her beginnings, the rumors, her love affairs, her marriage, her son, her successes, her farewells, her return, her mourning. The journey of an extraordinary popular icon who never stopped fighting. The courage of an artist who never gives up. "Sheila, toutes ces vies-là" is also a journey through time. 60 years of pop music, punctuated by numerous archives, personal films, timeless hits and illustrations by Marc-Antoine Coulon. But also 60 years of fashion, through a legendary wardrobe (her TV show outfits) that Sheila invites us to rediscover.
Ninon is a spirited hotel-manager who teaches self-defense classes to her terrified eldery neighbors. Daiga, an aspiring Lithuanian actress newly arrived to Paris, becomes fascinated with the life of a mysteriously beautiful drag performer.
The partners are back and are in a tight spot! Francois is going through a moral crisis, and Rene is experiencing the same. But, honesty is not always the best policy. After being suspended for their actions, they return to face their far more crooked replacements.
Two elderly ladies, Marie and Aminthe, both single and without children, live together in the house of their grandfather. Aminthe lives in the memory of Fabien, her husband to-be, who died in Indo-China more than fifty years ago. Marie, the elder one, likes to remind the happy time of their childhood - before they lost their parents prematurely. As kids, each have their own character flaws but seem to have a pure and simple childhood. Now, they live their pensions - small -, vegetables of the kitchen garden that Marie sells at the market and of the piano courses which Aminthe gives... Not enough to maintain their old residence, badly heated and of which the roof is to be remade... But when Aminthe affirms that it is necessary to sell and buy an apartment, Marie refuses categorically. Soon we learn what secrets these girls have kept all their lives.
A widow of a billionaire, Marie-France Dubreuil-Joris is also a renowned pianist. Trying to manage her fortune as well as possible, she entrusts most of it to her banker, whom she particularly appreciates. But his butler also has after his money.
Véra Bellini fights with her psychic friends for their gift to be recognized by medicine. But her opponent Doctor Pelletier thoughly resists and will reveal a difficult secret about Vera's life.
From the moment she glimpses her idol at the stage door, Catherine Moreau is determined to take the reins of power away from the great actress Adeline Margaux. Catherine maneuvers her way into Adeline's role, becomes a sensation and even causes turmoil in the lives of Adeline's director boyfriend, her playwright and his wife. Only the cynical drama critic sees through Catherine, admiring her audacity and perfect pattern of deceit.
In 1935, in the Burgundian village of Valromey, Commissioner Desbordes was the very unpopular leader of the anti-alcoholic league. His own brother, Pimpin, is an unconditional defender of the vineyard. Pierre Moreau is, for his part, the representative of a hygienic drink, the "Koku-Kolu". The cafe owner's daughter, Rose, will find the man very to her liking and will manage to seduce him.
Valentin D is a hot designer architect who claims to be an orphan because he is too ashamed to admit he is the son of working-class scrap metal merchants from the north of France.
From the moment she glimpses her idol at the stage door, Catherine Moreau is determined to take the reins of power away from the great actress Adeline Margaux. Catherine maneuvers her way into Adeline's role, becomes a sensation and even causes turmoil in the lives of Adeline's director boyfriend, her playwright and his wife. Only the cynical drama critic sees through Catherine, admiring her audacity and perfect pattern of deceit.
Harold Chasen is a young man of 19 years with an overflowing and morbid imagination, who takes advantage of his free time to attend funerals, and stage suicides to react to his mother, Mrs. Chasen, a strict, tyrannical woman and a a bit hysterical, who takes care of finding a wife for his son. But when Harold meets Maude, "80 year old princess", nonconformist and full of life, everything changes for the young man. The old woman teaches him to love life through more wacky experiences than each other, and Harold falls in love with it.
Polly West, a very rich American star, has bought the castle of Sainte Apolline, a small village in Provence. As soon as she arrives, the dynamic actress causes trouble among the inhabitants. After having received her in confession, the priest seems to be taken by madness. To add to the turmoil, the country warden and the grocer enter her service. Honorin, the mayor, tries to cope and maintain order. While the people of the village keep asking questions, Polly flies to the rescue of the beautiful Italian girl Clara, who has been raped by the landlord Léonce. Soon, Honotin discovers that Polly is buying up the village's land using a few nominees. He then understands that this woman is not a stranger and that, a few years ago, the villagers chased her away because she was a mother, and these same villagers caused the death of her parents. Polly has returned to seek revenge.
When Huguette, a 78-year-old former school principal, ends up homeless because she did not pay her rent, her neighbor Marion offers her a deal: a roof in exchange of her help to prevent the teenager she is raising alone, Rémi, from failing school.
The great restaurant reopens with new extravagent costumers and the same beloved manager.
While her apartment is being renovated, Jacqueline is thrilled to be forced into spending "a few days" with her eldest daughter Carole and her son-in-law, who are both in couples therapy. These "few days" turn into "a few months". Jacqueline quickly feels at home. She prepares dinners, monopolizes the television, reorganizes the kitchen... She is here, and no one knows for how long!
Liliane and Maud are twin sisters. The first is a modest provincial hairdresser while the second leads the great life in Paris. They both fight over their mother's custody.
Inspired even as a boy by the Folies Bergere, the legendary Paris cabaret venue, couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier always wanted to stage a show there. "But what story can I tell?" he muses in this doc about the six months of preparation that went into the show. "Mine." Combining fashion with film, dance, theater, and unapologetic over-the-top-ness, the revue offers a 40-year career retrospective of the designer who is practically never spoken of without using the phrase enfant terrible. Notorious among cinephiles for his costumes for The Fifth Element and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover and among pop fans for Madonna's pointy cone brassiere, he also incorporated teddy bears and S&M fetish gear as design motifs. In the show, the fanciful and outrageous meets the naughtily witty (a skit sending up Vogue dragon lady Anna Wintour) and the poignant (a tribute to his partner Francis Menuge, who died in 1990).
After returning from a long African exile, a sixty-year-old woman leaves her unfaithful husband and starts anew with her five-year-old granddaughter.
At the close of Jacques Chirac's life, politician Jean-Louis Debré has wished to make a film to celebrate his friend, to tell the story of their friendship and professional understanding, and to make an intimate portrait of the former President of France through the accounts of a few very close friends. Thanks to Jean-Louis Debré's presence, Claude Chirac and some of Jacques Chirac's closest friends, famous or unknown, agreed to talk to the camera, sometimes for the first time, to evoke their untold-before memories and tell about the moments that bonded the two men for a lifetime.
After his crew breaks up, a gifted but insecure hip-hop dancer teaches at a top ballet school in Paris, where he falls for an aspiring ballerina.
Before music videos, there were scopitones (a popular music jukebox/viewing machine). This is a strangely homoerotic scopitone featuring the French singer Line Renaud and many, many shirtless men.
Documentary showing one day of work of over 90 actors and filmmakers from French cinema on the same day. On 27 March 2002, 27 teams filmed actors, directors, producers and technicians at work, from Hawaii to Paris and from New York to Lisbon.
1944. In France, devastated by the German occupation, part of the population resists the yoke of the occupiers, men and women who become heroes despite themselves by becoming active members of the Vaucluse resistance. Mother Madeleine, head of an institute for deaf girls, is one of these heroic women. She hides Jewish children and members of the Resistance in her convent, in defiance of the German threat.
Bénédicte, Martine, and Juliette were classmates who formed an inseparable trio. Fifteen years later, Bénédicte and Martine return to their small native town of Pithiviers for Juliette's funeral. But Juliette remains present in Bénédicte and Martine's remembrances and through her eighteen-year-old daughter Scarlett, who bears a striking resemblance.
A documentary about the recording of the charity song "Live for Love United", featuring some of the biggest football (soccer) stars of the time.