La selection du festival
The festival selection

Story :

One New Year's Eve at the Police station, Inspector Antoine Gallien, seconded by Belmont, his assistant, is talking to the lawyer Martinaud. The bodies of 2 young girls have just been discovered, raped and murdered. Martinaud knew one of them. At first he tries to throw his weight around but quickly changes when he realizes the inspector shows how his lack of an alibi makes him suspect number one...

Critic :

This intelligent and captiving film has "style". Unaffraid of a missalliance, it unites what was once called "French quality" with American efficiency. And what acting! Romy Schneider is icily haughty as a hateful bourgeois. Lino Ventura plays Inspector Gallien as a policeman who loves a well-done job, sensitive in his own way, but with no illusions about human nature. And last but not least. Michel Serrrault is stupendous as the disquieting Lawyer Martinaud, Serrault whose tense, subtle and constantly inventive interpretation contributes in a very large degree to the pleasure we enjoy at seeing "Garde à Vue". Jean De BARCONCELLI - LE MONDE, SEPTEMBER, 1981.

Story :

The naked, lifeless body of a renowned Catholic author is found on a beach in Brittany. Lavardin's investigation involves a not very pleasant family where he once had an affair with the widow. His cynicism leads him to invent a culprit who is not the one who accidentally caused the death of the hateful eminent man.

Critic :

Few things in recent French films are as troubling as Poiret's round, blue eyes dilated by malice as they exaine other people or a plate of fried eggs with equal interest. As if the world of Chabrol with its curios, bachelor rooms and huge trees was revisited at full speed by one of the thousand eyes of Doctor Mabuse, transformed into a laser beam. His look does not judge (everything is already judged in substance and guilt is the one thing in the world best shared), it verifies. The result is a major timesaver. Since no one can use Lavardin's "look" as a basis, everyone, including the spectator, is caught short by what Lavardin says, by words that do not mind stinging. If the character is so frightening, it is because we feel he is capable at any moment of saying what he thinks and doing what he says. Not because it is in the scenario but because it is borne out by the actor. Everyone is caught short and the film acquires an aslounding speed that must be accredited to Chabrol's know-how and Poiret's acting. SERGE DANEY - LIBERATION, MARCH 12, 1986.

Story :

At the end of a lonely evening such as life sometimes cynically offers, François Marcorelle, a magistrate judge in Chambéry, finds himself in the room of a young Polish girl whom he met in a local restaurant. There, he committed murder. At least he thinks so, but his friend Georges says it is only another of his usual nightmares. A pure product of guilty feelings that have nagged him for a long time and which his adversaries at the Palace of Justice use against him. But this time Marcorelle feels it is not a dream. And by chance he finds proof of it on a summer afternoon in the darkness of a movie house.

Critic :

It is amusing but also a bit stressful. Should we laugh or tremble? Both. And the affair in the little is not an affair... which indeed justifies turning it into a big affair. The film is devilishly intelligent, cunning and highly original among today's productions. But to appreciate it, which is perhaps its limitation and why at times it is tiring, you need to enjoy not knowing where your are going. PM- LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, SEPTEMBER, 2000.

Story :

A police investigator arouses his superiors'thunder after expressing his disatisfaction loud and clear about the work methods in practice. He then finds himself transferred to a squad specialising in narcotics.

Critic :

When for once a filmmaker looks at reality and dares to handle one of the hottest files on modern French society, the enterprise should be saluted on its merits and not be criticised a method of filmmaking highly admired in America. An extremely intelligent mixture of fact and fiction, "L.627" shuffles the cards and avoids any false debate : "This is true, that isn't". Obviously, the filmmaker accomplished a big job in the field to authenticate the truth in all the scenes. But at the same time, he uses this living material and sets the scene to tell us 2 or 3 things that he, Bertrand Tavernier, knows about drugs, dealers and the misery of the police today. What is beautiful and moving is to find the mark of an auteur in a domain where it is unexpected. A.A. - L'EVENEMENT DU JEUDI, SEPTEMBER 1992.

Story :

Carla Bhem has worked as a secretary for a property development company for a long time. Her job, basically, is everything from handling files and answering the phone to drafting estimates and dealing with suppliers. First to arrive in the morning, last out at night. For that, she gets paid like a serf, treated like mud and oredered around like a dog. Carla has had enough. She thinks she deserves better. Only trouble is, in a male-dominated society, what hope is there for a 35-year-old woman with a so-so physique and a hearing aid in both ears?
The solution's name is Paul Angeli, the new trainee she manages to have hired. Paul is 25 years old and completely unskilled in property development - in fact, he's clueless. But he has other qualities : he's a thief, fresh out of jail, and what's more he's good-looking.
As the syaing goes, "It takes two to tango". She leaches him good manners and he teaches her bad ones. The first results are instantly encouraging.

Story :

Adrien Lecouvreur, alias "Le Poulpe", decides to leave Paris with gis girlfriend, Cheryl. After his last encounter with the man in the latex mask, he needs to relax. But when he arrives at Morsang, Cheryl's little hometown, he finds a new mystery to solve. The tomb of cheryl's grandparents has been desecrated. Le Poulpe sets to work to find the culprits.

Critic :

It's clear that "Le Poulpe" is a very "in" movie. But simpatico. It owes a lot to its 2 actors, geniuses, as it happens, in this offbeat sytle: Jean-Pierre Darroussin, sparkling with nonchalance in the most aslounding situations, and Clotilde Courau, a sumpluous bimbo who knows all the latest, with charm spiced with banter that explodes the screen. A new tone. "To tenderise it, you have to hit it", says the publicity for "Le Poulpe". But you can also just consume it as it is...ANNIE COPPERMAN - LES ECHOS, OCTOBER, 1998.

Story :

The Paris region, early winter. A young woman, Marie Bourgoin, suddenly disppears. the only clue : a tourist folder found at the scene of the crime, of Mauritius Island, spotted with blood. The crminal squad in Versailles is handling the case. Commander Fabian and Captain Gomez set to work. The area is combed, neighbors are questione, eventual clues are analysed. Not a trace. A few days later, still near Paris, 2 bodies are dug up. One is a young blonde, like Marie Bourgoin. Fabian follows the lead, studying lists of missing persons with precise physical criteria. The result : a probable serial killer who has been operating in the area for several years. For Gomez and Fabian, the Stations of the Cross then begin...

Critic :

With his patient, clinical observation of the daily routine of criminal investigators, Frédéric Schoendoerffer revives the French whodunit. Gomez (Dussollier, astoungingly physical) takes up Russian roulette with his bottles of Glenfiddich and Fabian (Charles Berling) can not repress his impulses for a porno star, a transfer of tortured llesh. Bit by bit, the proliferating worm penetrates the pulp of each shot as an echography image, vector of ope and innocence, dons frightening attire where a semple wall turns out to bear deadly madnes. Even to the story itself which told like a holocaust in the last half-hour, getting rid of the view of one of the 2 main characters before collapsing in a beildering finale of deflationism, a seppuku narrative facing the unnamable, misonstruing the rules and advice of failure on elementary psychology. This liquidation of resolve, though it may be decried by the peevish, nevertheless fears no jeering. With this act of terrorism in opposition to the spectacular temptation governing the genre. Schoendoerffer establishes himself in the very closed circle of whodunit snipers, revived after being serverly scoffed at . BERTRAND LOUTTE - LES INROCKUPTIBLES, MARCH, 2000.

Story :

On a little Parisian square, drugs are bought and sold, slot machines are installed, bars change owners and money circulates. More or less unaware of these deals, some young people live and die with them. Alain, a bar owner, observes this world without comrehending, nor reacting until one day a young girl, Marie, asks him to help her find her brother's killers...

Critic :

Act in time, if you don't want to die. Thanks to a detour via the whodunit and with a backdrop of perdectly analyzed drug corruption, Salvadori continues subtly talking to us about imortant things : the timeliness of expendiency, be it social, political or affective. A fine lesson in civism and cinema, where, after his comedies. Salvadori again signs a successful marriage between an old Hollywood standard and a state of the world in modern Paris, Great art. F.-G. LORRAIN - LE POINT, JUNE, 2000.

Story :

A certain Massoulier is killed by a shot in the head during a hunting party. Julien Vercel head of a real estate agency, is accused of homicide. Not only was he at the scence of the crime but his gingerprints are on Massoulier's car. A bit later, Vercel's wife, Marie-Christine, who was also Massoulier's mistress, is discorvered murdered. Faced with such accusations, Julien Vercel decides to flee and conduct his own investigation. He gets precious help from his secretary, Barbara Becker...

Critic :

This duo is wonderfully charming because Jean-Louis Trintignant is a master of the equivocal smile and ambiguous silence, and also because Fanny Ardant explodes with fantasy, freedom of movement and a sparkling eye we have never seen in her before. François Truffaut seems to enjoy creating, touch by touch, his 2 characters, heirs to American black-and-white comedies from the days of James Stewart and Katherine Hepburn. In short, pure happiness! CLAUDE BAIGNERES - LE FIGARO, AUGUST, 1983.