Nine women have accused prolific French producer Alain Sarde of rape and sexual assault in a detailed expose in the French edition of Elle magazine.
Sarde has denied the accusations. The 72-year-old producer has not been officially charged with any crimes for the incidents in question, according to the magazine.
The testimonies were published on May 14, on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival where Sarde has premiered 50 films over the years including Roman Polanski’s Palme d’Or-winning The Pianist and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.
The accusations date from between 1985 and 2003 and are all from actresses who mostly...
Sarde has denied the accusations. The 72-year-old producer has not been officially charged with any crimes for the incidents in question, according to the magazine.
The testimonies were published on May 14, on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival where Sarde has premiered 50 films over the years including Roman Polanski’s Palme d’Or-winning The Pianist and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.
The accusations date from between 1985 and 2003 and are all from actresses who mostly...
- 5/14/2024
- ScreenDaily
Kris Marshall and Annelise Hesme’s relationship can’t generate much heat in this overly tricksy Curtis-lite setup
“Maybe we’re in one of those Japanese horror movies – the ones with creepy empty apartments, corridors and lifts.” So says Kris Marshall’s just-made-redundant record-company worker Tom when he finds himself stuck in an elevator with Annelise Hesme’s Eloise, the French consultant who authorised his firing.
Sadly, rather than being in a horror movie, they’re trapped in a slightly naff British romcom that attempts to weld the beginning/end of the affair structure of Blue Valentine to some Richard Curtis-lite South Bank soppiness. Marshall and Hesme are amiable players, but writer/director Gavin Boyter packs their conversations (which cut back and forth across the years) with too much cliche and contrivance for their putative relationship to gel, let alone sparkle.
Continue reading...
“Maybe we’re in one of those Japanese horror movies – the ones with creepy empty apartments, corridors and lifts.” So says Kris Marshall’s just-made-redundant record-company worker Tom when he finds himself stuck in an elevator with Annelise Hesme’s Eloise, the French consultant who authorised his firing.
Sadly, rather than being in a horror movie, they’re trapped in a slightly naff British romcom that attempts to weld the beginning/end of the affair structure of Blue Valentine to some Richard Curtis-lite South Bank soppiness. Marshall and Hesme are amiable players, but writer/director Gavin Boyter packs their conversations (which cut back and forth across the years) with too much cliche and contrivance for their putative relationship to gel, let alone sparkle.
Continue reading...
- 12/20/2015
- by Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
- The Guardian - Film News
Competently put together by the standards of a TV commercial, this post-Richard Curtis romcom is let down by unbearable dialogue and characterisation
This bittersweet romcom two-hander is pretty excruciating, like a feature-length deleted scene from Richard Curtis’s Love Actually … Deleted, that is, because it frankly doesn’t work. Kris Marshall plays Tom, a guy who one Christmas finds himself moping around on London’s touristy-bohemian South Bank and accidentally bumps into Eloise (Annelise Hesme), his sleek French ex with whom he’s still very much in love. She has half an hour to kill before getting on a train and leaving the UK for ever, with her new partner. So they stroll around making halting conversation and the action periodically flashes back to their abysmally unfunny and unconvincing meet-non-cute: they were trapped in a lift together.
Continue reading...
This bittersweet romcom two-hander is pretty excruciating, like a feature-length deleted scene from Richard Curtis’s Love Actually … Deleted, that is, because it frankly doesn’t work. Kris Marshall plays Tom, a guy who one Christmas finds himself moping around on London’s touristy-bohemian South Bank and accidentally bumps into Eloise (Annelise Hesme), his sleek French ex with whom he’s still very much in love. She has half an hour to kill before getting on a train and leaving the UK for ever, with her new partner. So they stroll around making halting conversation and the action periodically flashes back to their abysmally unfunny and unconvincing meet-non-cute: they were trapped in a lift together.
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- 12/17/2015
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Three's Company may be long gone, but its legacy of incorrectly interpreted conversations and mistaken identities and motivations lives on in dreary rom-coms like Hôtel Normandy. Charles Nemes's film is a decidedly sitcom-y affair in which widowed French banker Alice (Héléna Noguerra) is sent on a resort holiday by her friends, who have blackmailed an in-debt client to have a fling with her. Complications ensue when that contracted Romeo farms out his duties to his buffoonish brother, Yvan (Ary Abittan), and Alice winds up instead falling head over heels for wealthy suitor Jacques (Eric Elmosnino)—all while accepting from him, and then giving away, a valuable painting that Jacques's ex-wife, Hélène (Annelise Hesme), suspects Alice a...
- 9/25/2013
- Village Voice
Alexander (2004) Film Review, a movie directed by Oliver Stone and starring Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Anthony Hopkins, Jared Leto, Rosario Dawson, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Rory McCann, Gary Stretch, Ian Beattie, Neil Jackson, Raz Degan, Christopher Plummer, John Kavanagh, and Annelise Hesme. Subtlety is overrated. Say what you will about Oliver Stone, but [...]
The post Film Review: Alexander (2004): Oliver Stone, Colin Farrell, Val Kilmer appeared first on Film-Book.com.
Continue reading: Film Review: Alexander (2004): Oliver Stone, Colin Farrell, Val Kilmer...
- 7/29/2012
- by Jeremy Kibler
- Film-Book
Daniele Thompson, who wrote the screenplay for Fauteuils d'orchestre with her son, actor Christopher Thompson, directs the multicharacter comedy with such smooth assurance that the movie glows with infectious cheerfulness. The film moves effortlessly among three story lines and locations, all within easy walking distance in an upscale Paris neighborhood at the intersection of Life, Love and Art.
This French charmer could do well in North American art houses, especially with older audiences who will appreciate the old-fashioned -- in the best sense of that phrase -- approach to story, characters and themes. It certainly proved to be one of the hits of the French film series in Los Angeles.
Our entree into these competing though complementary worlds is Jessica (Cecile de France), a young woman so recently arrived in Paris she doesn't even have a place to live. She takes a waitressing job at the Bar des Theatres on the chic Avenue Montaigne, a venerable establishment that traditionally never hires women, yet the manager is desperate.
Two waiters are sick, and three major events will occur simultaneously on the street: Soap opera star Catherine Versen (Cesar-nominated Valerie Lemercier) will open in a Feydeau farce at the theater next door; celebrated pianist Jean-Francois Lefort (Albert Dupontel) will perform a Beethoven concert; and aging financier Jacques Grumberg (Claude Brasseur) will auction off his renowned art collection.
The bar is the kind of joint where management willingly accepts orders from around the quarter. So Jessica finds herself drawn into the people and preparations for each of these events. And each event represents a severe personal crisis.
Catherine makes a fortune on the soap yet longs for cinematic glory. Run physically ragged by a schedule of night shoots and day rehearsals, the actress is desperate to land an interview with visiting American director Brian Sobinski (played with knowing glee by famed director Sydney Pollack), who is casting for a film about Simone de Beauvoir.
At the peak of his musical abilities, Jean-Francois is nevertheless a burnt-out case. Exhausted by his concert schedule, he longs to get off the merry-go-round to teach and perform for charity. His manager-wife Valentine (Italian actress Laura Morante) can't fathom what role that would leave for her in their partnership. So a midlife crisis has precipitated a martial one.
Grumberg's decision to sell off the art he and his late wife spent a lifetime collecting has caused a rift with his son Frederic (Christopher Thompson). A glum academic, he disapproves of his dad's relationship with a beautiful gold digger (Annelise Hesme), which is exacerbated by the fact that Valerie was once his mistress.
Jessica, who has a Candide-like optimism about life, floats through these three sets of characters, becoming a part of everyone's life even as she searches unsuccessfully for living quarters while finding ingenious solutions for temporary beds. The film's other observer is Claudie (Dani), the theater's retiring concierge who, talentless herself, has lived her life in happy proximity to people loaded with talent.
The film is neither profound nor deep but does lightly touch on serious issues revolving around the temporal nature of life. All crises get neatly and happily resolved by fadeout, and the film approvingly views all its bourgeois glamour. No, existence is never quite so tidy, but that's why we go to movies such as Orchestra Seats.
Bookending the film is the relationship between Jessica and the grandmother who raised her. This role is delightfully played by Suzanne Flon, who recently died at age 87. The film is dedicated to the veteran actress.
ORCHESTRA SEATS
Thelma Films
Credits:
Director: Daniele Thompson
Screenwriters: Daniele Thompson, Christopher Thompson
Producer: Christine Gozlan
Director of photography: Jean-Marc Fabre
Production designer: Michele Abbe-Vannier
Music: Nicola Piovani
Costume designer: Catherine Leterrier
Editor: Sylvie Landra
Cast:
Jessica: Cecile de France
Catherine: Valerie Lemercier
Jean-Francois: Albert Dupontel
Valentine: Laura Morante
Jacques Grumberg: Claude Brasseur
Frederic: Christopher Thompson
Claudie: Dani
Brian
Sydney Pollack
Valerie: Annelise Hesme
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 105 minutes...
This French charmer could do well in North American art houses, especially with older audiences who will appreciate the old-fashioned -- in the best sense of that phrase -- approach to story, characters and themes. It certainly proved to be one of the hits of the French film series in Los Angeles.
Our entree into these competing though complementary worlds is Jessica (Cecile de France), a young woman so recently arrived in Paris she doesn't even have a place to live. She takes a waitressing job at the Bar des Theatres on the chic Avenue Montaigne, a venerable establishment that traditionally never hires women, yet the manager is desperate.
Two waiters are sick, and three major events will occur simultaneously on the street: Soap opera star Catherine Versen (Cesar-nominated Valerie Lemercier) will open in a Feydeau farce at the theater next door; celebrated pianist Jean-Francois Lefort (Albert Dupontel) will perform a Beethoven concert; and aging financier Jacques Grumberg (Claude Brasseur) will auction off his renowned art collection.
The bar is the kind of joint where management willingly accepts orders from around the quarter. So Jessica finds herself drawn into the people and preparations for each of these events. And each event represents a severe personal crisis.
Catherine makes a fortune on the soap yet longs for cinematic glory. Run physically ragged by a schedule of night shoots and day rehearsals, the actress is desperate to land an interview with visiting American director Brian Sobinski (played with knowing glee by famed director Sydney Pollack), who is casting for a film about Simone de Beauvoir.
At the peak of his musical abilities, Jean-Francois is nevertheless a burnt-out case. Exhausted by his concert schedule, he longs to get off the merry-go-round to teach and perform for charity. His manager-wife Valentine (Italian actress Laura Morante) can't fathom what role that would leave for her in their partnership. So a midlife crisis has precipitated a martial one.
Grumberg's decision to sell off the art he and his late wife spent a lifetime collecting has caused a rift with his son Frederic (Christopher Thompson). A glum academic, he disapproves of his dad's relationship with a beautiful gold digger (Annelise Hesme), which is exacerbated by the fact that Valerie was once his mistress.
Jessica, who has a Candide-like optimism about life, floats through these three sets of characters, becoming a part of everyone's life even as she searches unsuccessfully for living quarters while finding ingenious solutions for temporary beds. The film's other observer is Claudie (Dani), the theater's retiring concierge who, talentless herself, has lived her life in happy proximity to people loaded with talent.
The film is neither profound nor deep but does lightly touch on serious issues revolving around the temporal nature of life. All crises get neatly and happily resolved by fadeout, and the film approvingly views all its bourgeois glamour. No, existence is never quite so tidy, but that's why we go to movies such as Orchestra Seats.
Bookending the film is the relationship between Jessica and the grandmother who raised her. This role is delightfully played by Suzanne Flon, who recently died at age 87. The film is dedicated to the veteran actress.
ORCHESTRA SEATS
Thelma Films
Credits:
Director: Daniele Thompson
Screenwriters: Daniele Thompson, Christopher Thompson
Producer: Christine Gozlan
Director of photography: Jean-Marc Fabre
Production designer: Michele Abbe-Vannier
Music: Nicola Piovani
Costume designer: Catherine Leterrier
Editor: Sylvie Landra
Cast:
Jessica: Cecile de France
Catherine: Valerie Lemercier
Jean-Francois: Albert Dupontel
Valentine: Laura Morante
Jacques Grumberg: Claude Brasseur
Frederic: Christopher Thompson
Claudie: Dani
Brian
Sydney Pollack
Valerie: Annelise Hesme
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 105 minutes...
- 4/26/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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