Anne Fontaine
1959 (65 лет)Born Fontaine Sibertin-Blanc, sister of actor Jean-Chrétien Sibertin-Blanc, she went as a young child to live in Lisbon, where her father, Antoine Sibertin-Blanc, is a music professor and cathedral organist. In adolescence she moved to Paris and trained in dance with Joseph Russillo while continuing her academic education, including philosophy. Her husband is Philippe Carcassonne, the film producer, and they have an adopted son who was born in Vietnam.
While still dancing, she was picked by Robert Hossein to play Esmeralda in a 1980 theatrical production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and around this time started to use the name Anne Fontaine. She continued with acting and became known for her roles in comedies like Si ma gueule vous plaît... (1981) and P.R.O.F.S.(1985). An opportunity to be assistant director came with a 1986 stage version of Céline's Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night) at the Renaud-Barrault theatre.
Fontaine's first project as solo director, Les histoires d'amour finissent mal... en général (Love Affairs Usually End Badly), won the 1993 Prix Jean Vigo (prize). In 1995, she worked with her brother on the comic Augustin. Two years later, she wrote and directed the successful Nettoyage à Sec (Dry Cleaning). This won the Best Screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival 1997 and is generally considered a milestone on Fontaine's way to becoming "an important figure in contemporary French cinema".
In 1999 the character Augustin (Jean-Chrétien Sibertin-Blanc) re-appeared in Fontaine's film Augustin, Roi Du Kung-Fu (Augustin, King of Kung-Fu). Comment j'ai tué mon père (How I Killed My Father) was released in 2001, and Nathalie... followed in 2003. The 2005 film, Entre Ses Mains (In His Hands) has been widely described as a thriller: an "intimate thriller" according to Fontaine herself. A third Augustin film, Nouvelle chance (also known as Oh La La) was released in 2006. Then came La fille de Monaco (The Girl From Monaco) in 2008 and Coco avant Chanel (Coco Before Chanel), her biopic of Coco Chanel, in 2009.
Fontaine's work is not easily categorised, though the phrase "psychological drama" is often used. She told a UK newspaper, "I try to work on my characters' blind side, in a kind of Freudian way: to ask, 'What are the things about themselves that they're unaware of?' I'm fascinated by the irony of fate, when something goes into a skid. All my stories have an element of cruelty in them."
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Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché
Pamela B. Green
Jodie Foster, Richard Abel
The epic life story of Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968), a French screenwriter, director and producer, true pioneer of cinema, the first person who made a narrative fiction film; author of hundreds of movies, but banished from history books. Ignored and forgotten. At last remembered.
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché
The Innocents
Anne Fontaine
Lou de Laâge, Agata Buzek
Poland, 1945. Mathilde, a young French Red Cross doctor, is on a mission to help the war survivors. When a nun seeks for her help, she is brought to a convent where several pregnant sisters are hiding, unable to reconcile their faith with their pregnancy. Mathilde becomes their only hope.
The Innocents
Reinventing Marvin
Anne Fontaine
Finnegan Oldfield, Jules Porier
Telling the true story of Marvin Bijou, a young boy from a working-class family in a small village, who suffers constant bullying at school and home for being ‘different’ – too sensitive and too feminine. A chance encounter with a drama teacher opens the doors to a world that offers him the chance to escape his situation.
Reinventing Marvin
Coco Before Chanel
Anne Fontaine
Audrey Tautou, Benoît Poelvoorde
Several years after leaving the orphanage, to which her father never returned for her, Gabrielle Chanel finds herself working in a provincial bar. She's both a seamstress for the performers and a singer, earning the nickname Coco from the song she sings nightly with her sister. A liaison with Baron Balsan gives her an entree into French society and a chance to develop her gift for designing.
Coco Before Chanel
Augustin, roi du kung-fu
Anne Fontaine
Bernard Campan, Jean-Chrétien Sibertin-Blanc
The solitary and largely self-contained Augustin (Jean-Chretien Sibertin Blanc), on obscure young actor of bit-parts and advertisements, has but one ambition - to play the lead role in a Kung Fu epic. But hours of Kung Fu practice alone in his room are not enough. Augustin knows he must pack up and start a new life in China... or at least that part of China within bicycling distance: Chinatown in south-east Paris. There he meets Ling (Maggie Cheung), a young Chinese woman who practices ocupuncture, and little by little, Ling's needles awaken emotions in Augustin that his virginal body had never dreamed of. Where will this lead him? To Kung Fu stardom, maybe not, but to another destiny, a quirky but logical continuation of the same dream.
Augustin, King of Kung-Fu
Gemma Bovery
Anne Fontaine
Gemma Arterton, Jason Flemyng
Martin, an ex-Parisian well-heeled hipster passionate about Gustave Flaubert who settled into a Norman village as a baker, sees an English couple moving into a small farm nearby. Not only are the names of the new arrivals Gemma and Charles Bovery, but their behavior also seems to be inspired by Flaubert's heroes.
Gemma Bovery
Nathalie...
Anne Fontaine
Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Béart
Paris doctor Catherine starts to think her husband, Bernard, is having an affair when she hears an unfamiliar woman's message on his voice mail. Hoping to learn more about his extramarital activities, Catherine heads to a strip club, where she hires call girl Nathalie to have a fling with Gerard. As the affair progresses, Nathalie gives Catherine regular status reports, and the relationship between the women evolves from business to personal.
Nathalie...
In His Hands
Anne Fontaine
Benoît Poelvoorde, Isabelle Carré
In Lille, Claire Gauthier is an ordinary married woman with a young daughter that works in an insurance company analyzing losses of insured properties. When the single veterinary Laurent Kessler claims damage in his basement caused by a flooding due to water leakage, Claire resolves the situation favorably for him. The weird Laurent visits Claire in her office successively, inviting her for drinks and lunch, and they get close to each other. Meanwhile, a serial killer is terrorizing Lille, killing women with a scalpel. Claire feels a great attraction for Laurent, who has an unusual behavior in her apartment. When Claire sees a scalpel in the pocket of Laurent's jacket, she fears him, but still loves him.
In His Hands
Adore
Anne Fontaine
Naomi Watts, Robin Wright
Lil and Roz are two lifelong friends, having grown up together as neighbors in an idyllic beach town. As adults, their sons have developed a friendship as strong as that which binds their mothers. One summer, all four are confronted by simmering emotions that have been mounting between them, and each find unexpected happiness in relationships that cross the bounds of convention.
Adore
My Worst Nightmare
Anne Fontaine
Isabelle Huppert, Benoît Poelvoorde
Agathe runs an art gallery. Her husband François is a publisher. Together they have one son, and in every way seem to be the picture of normality — but emotions are stewing under the surface. All it takes is the arrival of a complete stranger for things to start unravelling. Patrick is brash, uncouth and totally unselfconscious...
My Worst Nightmare
Augustin
Anne Fontaine
Jean-Chrétien Sibertin-Blanc, Stéphanie Zhang
Augustin Dos Santos is a benign simpleton with a slight stammer. He's serious about his part-time job as a clerk for an insurance company, and he also acts, with small parts under his belt in commercials and experimental films. An agent finds his serious innocence perfect for a part as an odd bellman. Before his screen test, he volunteers for a day at a hotel. At his screen test, his inability to see the comic center of the scene makes him perfect for the part. Back at work, women co-workers tease him, and then he's off to the countryside to play a vet in a government film about myxomatosis in rabbits. Can anything break through his serious view of reality?
Augustin
L'@mour est à réinventer
Paul Vecchiali, Merzak Allouache
Bérénice Bejo, Guillaume Depardieu
Different aspects of homosexual romance are explored in this compendium of ten short vignettes encompassing a broad look at AIDS and range for the tale of a lesbian teen trying to come out to her parents, to a gay man who shocks his lover by claiming to be pregnant, to another man's reminiscence of a brief affair with an HIV-positive man.
Love Reinvented
The Girl from Monaco
Anne Fontaine
Fabrice Luchini, Roschdy Zem
A brilliant and neurotic attorney goes to Monaco to defend a famous criminal. But, instead of focusing on the case, he falls for a beautiful she-devil, who turns him into a complete wreck... Hopefully, his zealous bodyguard will step in and put everything back in order... Or will he ?
The Girl from Monaco
