Hélène Surgère
1928 - 2011
La Machine
Paul Vecchiali
Jean-Christophe Bouvet, Sonia Saviange
Pierre Lentier murders an 8-year-old in horrendous circumstances. This 30-something solitary factory worker who lives on the edge of society is sentenced to death. A damning indictment of the death penalty and the manipulative behaviour of the media.
La Machine
Lise et André
Denis Dercourt
Isabelle Candelier, Michel Duchaussoy
Lise is a Parisian prostitute who has a young son, Sebastien. Lise dotes on her boy, who has a gift for music and sings in a children's choir directed by aging parish priest Father Andre. Sebastien becomes involved in an auto accident that sends him into a coma; after he remains unconscious for three months, Lise begins to panic, desperate for a remedy that medical science can't provide. When she is told of a field in a village in rural France where a miracle is said to have occurred some years before -- an apparition of the Virgin Mary arrived to provide food for a group of starving children -- Lise wants to travel to the site of the miracle to pray for her son. She also insists that Father Andre come along, but the priest is not eager to go, due to his age, his health, and his increasing cynicism about religion. Lise is persistent, however, and before long the two are on the road in search of a much-needed miracle.
Lise and Andre
Femmes femmes
Paul Vecchiali
Hélène Surgère, Sonia Saviange
The fantasies and dreams of two over-the-hill actresses are intertwined with their realities, as the two roommates struggle to survive their day-to-day lives in the expensive and difficult world of Paris.
Femmes femmes
Intimate Strangers
Patrice Leconte
Sandrine Bonnaire, Fabrice Luchini
Because she picked the wrong door, Anna ends up confessing her marriage problems to a financial adviser named William Faber. Touched by her distress, somewhat excited as well, Faber does not have the courage to tell her that he is not a psychiatrist. From appointment to appointment, a strange ritual is created between them. William is moved and fascinated to hear the secrets no man ever heard.
Intimate Strangers
Les belles manières
Jean-Claude Guiguet
Hélène Surgère, Emmanuel Lemoine
Camille, a young, provincial, proletarian man works for Hélène Courtray, who is still beautiful and seductive. She's a sophisticated, cultivated and well-to-do woman who has engaged him to care for her reclusive son who has spent the past few years voluntarily locked up in his room. An encounter between two persons and two worlds where the relationship of the young man to this closed, strange and unknown universe rapidly turns tragedy.
Fine Manners
Time Regained
Raúl Ruiz
Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart
Marcel Proust (1871–1922) is on his deathbed. Looking at photographs brings memories of his childhood, his youth, his lovers, and the way the Great War put an end to a stratum of society. His memories are in no particular order, they move back and forth in time. Marcel at various ages interacts with Odette, with the beautiful Gilberte and her doomed husband, with the pleasure-seeking Baron de Charlus, with Marcel’s lover Albertine, and with others; present also in memory are Marcel’s beloved mother and grandmother. It seems as if to live is to remember and to capture memories is to create a work of great art. The memories parallel the final volume of Proust’s novel.
Time Regained
My Life on Ice
Jacques Martineau, Olivier Ducastel
Jimmy Tavares, Ariane Ascaride
Etienne is crazy about ice skating and videoing his daily life with a digital camera. He records his mother, friends, and geography teacher. Initially his intention is to setup a date between his mother and his teacher, however, he starts to realize that he is infatuated with the teacher himself.
My Life on Ice
Ce jour-là
Raúl Ruiz
Bernard Giraudeau, Elsa Zylberstein
A father is scheming to have his slightly mental daughter from an earlier marriage killed by allowing a murderous psychopath to be released from the asylum and led to his house. However, the psychopath and the daughter fall for each other.
That Day
À la place du cœur
Robert Guédiguian
Ariane Ascaride, Christine Brücher
From the director of Marius et Jeannette, this story of two working-class families is a fable with an optimist streak. A young black man, Francois, is wrongly accused of rape by a racist policeman. The story is told in voiceover by his childhood friend, neighbor, and the mother of his future child, Clementine, who is white. The city is Marseilles as in the previous film, symbolic with its churches, prisons and ruins. Except in this film, director Robert Guediguian also ventures outside, taking the story to Sarajevo; two different cities, one devastated by war, the other by a bad economy and unemployment. A la Place du coeur won a Special Jury Prize at the 1998 San Sebastian Film Festival and was also shown at the 1998 Toronto Film Festival and the 1998 Montreal Film Festival.
Where the Heart Is
Les Sœurs Brontë
André Téchiné
Isabelle Adjani, Marie-France Pisier
In a small presbytery in Yorkshire, England, living under the watchful eyes of their aunt and father, a strict Anglican pastor, the Bronte sisters write their first works and quickly become literary sensations.
The Bronte Sisters
L'Étrangleur
Paul Vecchiali
Jacques Perrin, Julien Guiomar
Unhappy women are being murdered by Emile, a psychotic young man suffering from the delusion that his acts are mercy killings. The detective assigned to track down the killer resorts to seriously unorthodox and even unethical methods to get his man.
The Strangler
