Societe Generale Private Banking 1st Rendezvous with French Cinema

A bout  portant
(Point Blank)
In French with English subtitles, Action, France, 2010, Colour, 85mins
Director: Fred Cavayé
Cast: Gilles Lellouche, Roschdy Zem, Gérard Lanvin

Things couldn’t be better for Samuel and Nadia: he will soon be a nurse and she is expecting  her  first  child.  But  their  world  is  tipped  upside  down  when  Nadia  is kidnapped in front of Samuel’s very eyes and he’s incapable of doing anything about it. When he comes to, his cell phone rings: he has three hours to get a man, under police  surveillance,   out  of  the  hospital  where  he  works.  Samuel’s   destiny  is henceforth linked to that of Sartet, a gangster figure actively wanted by every branch of the police. If Samuel ever wants to see his wife alive again, he must act quickly…

 

 

 

Americano
In French with English subtitles, Drama, France, 2010, Colour, 105mins
Director: Mathieu Demy
Cast: Mathieu Demy, Salma Hayek, Géraldine Chaplin, Chiara Mastroianni

Martin lives in Paris with Claire. Their relationship has hit a dead end. When he loses his mother back in California, Martin must return to the city of his childhood to deal with  the  formalities  surrounding  his  inheritance.  In  Los  Angeles,  he’s  greeted  by Linda, a family friend who offers to help him through the difficult time. She takes him to his mother’s apartment, in a neighbourhood he used to know well when they lived there together.  Images from his childhood  resurface  and disturb him. Martin can’t face up to his mom’s death and takes off to Tijuana on the trail of Lola, a Mexican woman he used to know, and who held a special place in his mother’s life. He finds her at the Americano, a club where she dances every night… But to make his own peace, Martin will have to delve into his past.

 

 

 

Dernier étage gauche  gauche
(Top Floor, Left Wing)
In  French,  Arabic,  Kabyle  with  English  subtitles,  Comedy,  France,  2010,  Colour,
93mins
Director: Angelo Cianci
Cast:  Hippolyte  Girardot,  Fellag,  Aymen  Saidi,  Judith  Henry,  Michel  Vuillermoz, Thierry Goddard

This  is  not  the  way  it  was  supposed  to  turn  out.  Like  every  morning,  François Echeveria,  a bailiff, should have been able to carry out his daily property seizure, issue Villon in Montigny with a summons, and return home to his disastrous love life. But,  on  the  day  of  the  commemoration  of  9/11,  fate  decides  otherwise,  putting Mohand, an impoverished father, and Salem, his wild son, in his path, who, due to a misunderstanding, kidnap him. François, Mohand and Salem: three men blocked for 24 hours on the seventh floor of a social housing high-rise surrounded by officers of the riot squad who mistake  them for terrorists.  Three men who fight but who are obliged to get on, understand each other and bring to light a painful family secret.

Three  men condemned  to get on inside  an apartment  while,  outside  the building chaos slowly ensues…

 

Elle s’appelait Sarah
(Sarah’s Key)
In French and English with English subtitles, Drama, France, 2010, Colour, 111mins
Director: Gilles Paquet-Brenner
Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Mélusine Mayance, Niels Arestrup

Paris, today.

Julia Jarmond, an American journalist who’s been living in France for 20 years, investigates the terrible rounding up of Parisian Jews and their incarceration in the bicycle stadium,  Vel’d’Hiv,  during the Nazi occupation  of France. Tracing  her way back through events, her path crosses that of Sarah, who was ten years old on that fateful day in July 1942. For Julia, what was intended to be a subject of an article then  becomes  of  a  personal  nature,  revealing  a  family  mystery.  How  do  two destinies,   60  years  apart,  interweave   to  reveal  a  secret  that  will  shake  the foundations of the lives of Julia and her family? The truth from the past sometimes has a price in the present…

 

 

 

Forces  spéciales
(Special Forces)
In French with English subtitles, Action, France, 2011, Colour, 107mins
Director: Stéphane Rybojad
Cast: Diane Kruger, Djimon Hounsou, Benoît Magimel

Afghanistan.  Elsa  Casanova,  an  outstanding  journalist,  is  taken  hostage  by  the Taliban. Faced with her imminent execution, a Special Forces unit is sent to free her. In  hostile  yet  magnificent  landscapes,  an  unforgiving  pursuit  occurs  between  the captors who have no intentions of letting their prey escape and this group of soldiers who, even with their lives at stake, has only one objective: take her back alive. The strong-willed woman and these men of honour are compelled to face the worst of dangers together.

 

 

 

Gibier d’élevage
(Shiiku)
In Cambodian and English with English subtitles, France, 2011, Colour, HD, 93mins
Director: Rithy Panh
Cast: Curil Guei, Jhem Chuop, Soeum Chhouem, Pruoch Chhouem

Cambodia. The year is 1972. At the height of the Pacific War, a US aircraft crashes into Cambodian mountains. The survivor is immediately taken prisoner by the local villagers. But the guy is Black… For the naïve, mesmerized young child telling this story,  the  man’s  nationality,  race  and  language  don’t  make  him  an  enemy  or  a stranger, but merely an animal that needs to be taken care of. Rithy Panh brings this story  into  his  native  land  -the  little  Cambodian  child  from  the  rice  fields,  who’s responsible  for  guarding  the  prisoner,  is already  sucked  in by  the  Khmer  Rouge ideology. Across the border, in Vietnam, war is raging and US fighters fly over his country to bomb Vietnam. Will the child be able not to kill the black man – the enemy?  Based on the Japanese classic Shiiku (The Catch) by Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo.  Gibier d’élevage was presented at L’Atelier du Festival, Cannes Film Festival 2011.

 

 

 

L’art  d’aimer
(The Art of Love)
In French with English subtitles, Comedy, France, 2011, Colour, 85mins
Director: Emmanuel Moret
Cast:  Pascale  Arbillot,  Ariane  Ascaride,  Frédérique  Bel,  François  Cluzet,  Julie Depardieu

The very precise moment we fall in love, a particular kind of music is produced within us. This  music  is different  for each  of us and  can arise  at the most  unexpected moments.

 

 

L’Exercice de l’état
(The Minister)
In French with English subtitles, Thriller, France, 2011, Colour, 112mins
Director: Pierre Schoeller
Cast: Olivier Gourmet, Michel Blanc, Zabou Breitman, Laurent Stocker

Transport Minister Bertrand Saint-Jean is awoken in the middle of the night by his head of staff. A bus has gone off the road into a gully. He has no choice but to go to the scene of the accident. Thus begins the odyssey of a politician in a world that is increasingly more complex and hostile. Speed, power struggles, chaos, economic crisis… Everything follows in quick succession and clashes. Emergencies follow on each other’s heels. What sacrifices are men prepared to make? Just how long will they hold up in a state that devours those that work for it?

 

La fille du puisatier
(The Well-Digger’s Daughter)
In French with English subtitles, Drama, France, 2011, Colour, 107mins
Director: Daniel Auteuil
Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Kad Merad, Sabine Azéma, Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey

By cutting through the fields to take her father lunch, Patricia encounters Jacques. She is eighteen years old, he is twenty-six. She is pretty, with the fine manners of a young lady; he is a fighter pilot and handsome. A little bit of moonlight will do the rest during their second meeting. There will not be a third: Jacques is sent to the front.

The second encounter leads to Patricia’s pregnancy. Jacques’ rich parents claim it’s blackmail and Patricia and her well-digger father are the only ones to have the joy of welcoming the child into this world. A joy that the Mazels soon envy and try to share, for Jacques is declared missing.

 

Le moine
(The Monk)
In  French  and  Spanish  with  English  subtitles,  Historical  Drama,  France,  2010, Colour, 101mins
Director: Dominik Moll
Cast: Vincent Cassel, Deborah François, Joséphine Japy

An adaptation of the notorious Gothic novel by Matthew G. Lewis, published in 1796, The Monk tells the tragic tale of Friar Ambrosio, set in 17th century Catholic Spain. Abandoned at birth and left in front of the doors of a Capuchin monastery, Ambrosio is raised  by the friars.  He becomes  a preacher  much  admired  for his fervor  and feared  for  his  uncompromising  character.  He  believes  he  is  sheltered  from  all temptation. The arrival of a mysterious novice undermines his convictions and leads him down the path of sin.

 

Les bien-aimés
(Beloved)
In French with English subtitles, Musical, France, 2011, Colour, 135mins
Director: Christophe Honoré
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier

From Paris in the sixties to 21st-century London, Madeleine and her daughter Vera waltz in and out of the lives of the men they love. But not every era allows us to love blithely and lightheartedly.  How are we to resist the sands of time that attack our deepest feelings?

 

Les femmes  du 6ème étage
(Service Entrance)
In French with English subtitles, Comedy, France, 2010, Colour, 106mins
Director: Philippe le Guay
Cast:  Fabrice  Luchini,  Sandrine  Kiberlain,  Natalia  Verbeke,  Carmen  Maura,  Lola Duenas

Paris, 1960. Jean-Louis Joubert lives a peaceful yet boring bourgeois existence with his wife, a perfect socialite, his children in a boarding school and his finance office. The family has their world turned upside down when exuberant Spanish maids move into their building’s sixth floor, the servant’s quarters. Teresa, Carmen, Dolorès, Concepciòn and her niece Maria who just arrived from Burgos. Jean-Louis will unexpectedly bond with them, especially with Maria. She is young, pretty and full of joy.  In a word, Jean-Louis’ life is about to change… a lot.

 

Les hommes libres
(Free Men)
In French with English subtitles, Drama, France, 2011, Colour, 99mins
Director: Ismaël  Ferroukhi
Cast: Tahar Rahim, Michael Lonsdale, Mahmoud Shalaby, Lubna Azabal

1942, in German-occupied  Paris. Younes, a young unemployed Algerian, earns his living as a black marketeer. Arrested by the French police, Younes agrees to spy on the  Paris  mosque.  The  police  suspects  the  mosque  authorities,  among  whom  Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit, its Rector, of helping Resistance fighters and Jews by giving them  false  certificates.  At  the  mosque,  Younes  meets  the  Algerian  singer  Salim Halali. Younes is moved by Salim’s beautiful voice and forceful personality and they become friends. Soon after, he discovers that Salim is Jewish. In spite of the risks it entails,  Younes  stops  collaborating  with  the  police.  Confronted  by  the  horrors unfolding  around  him,  Younes  gradually  evolves  from  being  a  politically  ignorant immigrant worker into a fully-fledged freedom fighter.

Les  hommes  libres  has  been  awarded  the  Prix  du  jury  des  Jeunes  at the  2011 French Film Festival in Bienne, Switzerland.

 

Poupoupidou
(Nobody Else But You)
In French with English subtitles, Thriller, France, 2011, Colour, 102mins
Director: Gérald Hustache-Mathieu
Cast: Jean-Paul Rouve, Sophie Quinton, Guillaume Gouix, Olivier Rabourdin

Rousseau is a bestselling crime novelist from Paris, troubled by a persistent writer’s block. Candice Lecoeur is a local beauty, gracing the famous “Belle de Jura” cheese packaging, who following a hypnosis session, has gotten it into her head that she might well be the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe. The two will meet in the coldest village in France, but only after Candice has been found dead. The case was closed before it even opened and the cause of death has been announced as suicide by sleeping pills. Rousseau is the only one who doesn’t buy it. Reality turns out to be stranger than fiction – and a source of inspiration – as Rousseau uncovers the truth about Candice’s past and her untimely death.

 

 

 

The Artist
In French with English subtitles, Drama, France, 2011, Black and White, Silent Film,
100mins
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman

The  story  takes  place  in  Hollywood  between  1927  and  1931  and  focuses  on  a declining male film star and a rising actress, as silent cinema grows out of fashion and is replaced by the talkies. The film is itself a silent film and in black-and-white.

 

Un heureux événement
(A Happy Event)
In French with English subtitles, Comedy, France, 2011, Colour, 110mins
Director: Rémi Bezançon
Cast: Louise Bourgoin, Pio Marmai

“She pushed me into a corner, beyond all my limits, confronted me with the absolutes of love, sacrifice, tenderness, and neglect. She contorted and transformed me. Why didn’t anyone say anything to me? Why don’t we talk about it?”

A happy event or the intimate vision of a pregnancy, sincere and without taboos. Un heureux  événement  is  an  adaptation  from  Eliette  Abecassis’  novel  of  the  same name.

CAROLE BOUQUET RETROSPECTIVE

 

 

Cet obscur objet  du désir
(That Obscure Object of Desire)
In  French  and  Spanish  with  English  subtitles,  Comedy,  France,  1977,  Colour,
105mins
Director: Luis Buñuel
Cast: Fernando Rey, Carole Bouquet and Ángela Molina

Just after boarding  a train, much to the surprise  of his fellow passengers,  a man pours a bucket of water over a young girl on the platform. Over the next few hours he explains (and we see in flashback) how he became obsessed by her (so much so that he failed to notice that she was played by two different actresses, representing different sides of her personality), and how she tantalised him, but would never allow him to satisfy his desire for her.

 

 

Grosse  fatigue
(Dead Tired)
In French with English subtitles, Drama, France, 1994, Colour, 87mins
Director: Michel Blanc
Cast: Carole Bouquet, Michel Blanc, Philippe Noiret, Marie-Anne Chazel

When becoming a celebrity turns into a nightmare for a star who suddenly, without understanding, receives slaps and punches instead of requests for autographs.

Lucie Aubrac
In French with English subtitles, Drama, France, 1996, Colour, 114mins
Director: Claude Berri
Cast: Carole Bouquet, Daniel Auteuil, Jean-Roger Milo, Patrice Chéreau

Lyons, March, 1943. Raymond Samuel (Aubrac is his alias in the underground) and Lucie, his wife, are active in the resistance movement against the Nazi occupying forces. On June 21, Raymond is arrested in Caluire, at the house of a doctor named Dugoujon, along with Jean Moulin. Lucie’s passionate  love for her husband drives her to risk it all and try everything to snatch her husband from the clutches of the Gestapo. Her efforts contain a mixture of violence and romance and seem to spring from the fertile imagination of a novelist. However, the film is based on the true story of Lucie Aubrac, ‘Ils partiront dans l’ivresse”, published by Les Editions du Seuil.

Travaux,  on sait quand  ça commence
(Works)
In French with English subtitles, Comedy, France, 2005, Colour, 95mins
Director: Brigitte Roüan
Cast: Carole Bouquet, Jean-Pierre Castaldi, Aldo Maccione

Chantal Letellier is “an admirable woman”. She is a lawyer and she always wins. In her profession, she is a success, but in her personal life, she is a failure. Amicably divorced,  she is flanked by two “badly brought up” adolescents.  Her love life is a desert:  no  time.  As  it  is  necessary  for  the  body  to  rejoice,  she  submits  to  the advances of a client.