Jean-Claude Biette
1942 - 2003
The Mother and the Whore
Jean Eustache
Bernadette Lafont, Jean-Pierre Léaud
Aimless young Alexandre juggles his relationships with his girlfriend, Marie, and a casual lover named Veronika. Marie becomes increasingly jealous of Alexandre's fling with Veronika and as the trio continues their unsustainable affair, the emotional stakes get higher, leading to conflict and unhappiness.
The Mother and the Whore
A Tale of Winter
Éric Rohmer
Charlotte Véry, Frédéric van den Driessche
Felicie and Charles have a whirlwind holiday romance. Due to a mix-up on addresses they lose contact, and five years later at Christmas-time Felicie is living with her mother in a cold Paris with a daughter as a reminder of that long-ago summer. For male companionship she oscillates between hairdresser Maxence and the intellectual Loic, but seems unable to commit to either as the memory of Charles and what might have been hangs over everything.
A Tale of Winter
Trois ponts sur la rivière
Jean-Claude Biette
Jeanne Balibar, Mathieu Amalric
Arthur is a history teacher who lives alone in Paris after having broken up with Claire. He is a sensitive man, full of existential doubts and questions. He has to go to Lisbon to meet an eminent historian whose work is the subject of his thesis. Having just made up with Claire, he decides to take her along. She's an ideal travel companion and it seems their relationship has not yet exhausted its potential. But moving from Lisbon to Oporto, their fantasy of a second honeymoon clashes with the reality of a world on the verge of a nightmare.
Trois ponts sur la rivière
Suzanne's Career
Éric Rohmer
Catherine Sée, Philippe Beuzen
In the second of Rohmer's moral tales, he examines the relationship between two friends and a girl who at first appears easily exploited. It is a complex tale of feelings and misconceptions, acted out within the head of the main character, as part of Rohmer's attempt to more easily simulate the mindscape quality of literature within a film.
Suzanne’s Career
Loin de Manhattan
Jean-Claude Biette
Jean-Christophe Bouvet, Sonia Saviange
Christian, an art critic, must write a study on the painter René Dimanche in order to understand why he did not produce anything for eight years. He asks his friend Ingrid to help him break through this mystery.
Loin de Manhattan
Les yeux ne veulent pas en tout temps se fermer, ou Peut-être qu'un jour Rome se permettra de choisir à son tour
Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
Adriano Aprà, Anne Brumagne
Straub-Huillet’s first color film, adapts a lesser-known Corneille tragedy from 1664, which in turn was based on an episode of imperial court intrigue chronicled in Tacitus’s Histories. The costuming is classical, and the toga-clad, nonprofessional cast performs the drama’s original French text amid the ruins of Rome’s Palatine Hill while the noise of contemporary urban life hums in the background. Their lines are executed with a terrific flatness and frequently through heavy accents; the language in Othon becomes not merely an expression but a thing itself, an element whose plainness here alerts us to qualities of the work that might otherwise be subordinated.
Othon
Saltimbank
Jean-Claude Biette
Jean-Christophe Bouvet, Jean-Marc Barr
The title reflects the brand of a financial institution, the bank of the Saltim family: Frederic, the younger brother, runs the family bank; his brother Bruno rejected the position of executive director, and chose to fund a theatrical company. Around them, there is a net of family members, friends, and acquaintances who seem to swirl around the banking brothers. Frederic and Bruno are both trying to control the future of their beautiful niece, Vanessa. The coffee shop owners Eve and Jim complicate everybody's life with their intrigues and lies. A strange stage director comes from his foreign exile. And lack of funds suddenly reveals the true colors of everyone - in banking, on stage, and everywhere.
Saltimbank
India Song
Marguerite Duras
Delphine Seyrig, Michael Lonsdale
India, 1937. Anne-Marie Stretter is the wife of the French ambassador and leads a solitary yet privileged life in Calcutta. The tedium of her existence is relieved by numerous illicit love affairs with government officials, young men who find her an object of desire and fascination. The Vice Consul is driven insane by his love for her and, expelled from the ambassador’s palace, cries like a sick animal. Life continues for Anne-Marie Stretter, the same tedious existence…
India Song
