Presle, Micheline

King Of Hearts

This film was a touchstone of the late 1960s, when it was seen as an antiwar allegory for a world in which madness seemed to reign. Of course, that would probably be true whenever this movie was shown, wouldn't it? Directed by Philippe de Broca and set during World War I, King of Hearts stars Alan Bates as a Scottish soldier separated from his unit in France. He wanders into a small French village that has been abandoned by its residents in the face of oncoming combat. Instead, the town is populated by the residents of a nearby insane asylum, whose keepers have fled--a fact that escapes the innocent soldier, who assumes these are the regular folks. A film that celebrates the innocence and wisdom of the insane, even as it questions who the real madmen are. --Marshall Fine

A Scottish soldier is sent to disarm a bomb in a French village that has been evacuated except for the inmates of an insane asylum. He doesn't realize that all his new friends are mentally unstable until he is crowned King.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: NR
Release Date: 7-SEP-2004
Media Type: DVD

If a Man Answers

Donkey Skin

Donkey Skin reunites Catherine Deneuve with Jacques Demy and Michel Legrand, yet it's quite unlike The Umbrellas of Cherbourg or The Young Girls of Rochefort. Those 1960s musicals were set in some semblance of the modern world, but Donkey Skin, based on a fable by Charles Perrault, takes place in a fantastical fairyland, located somewhere between The Wizard of Oz and La Belle et la Bête. Jean Marais, Jean Cocteau's Beast, is even the king of the kingdom. Alas, he's just lost his queen (Deneuve), whose dying wish is that he marry a woman more beautiful than she. Deranged by loss, he decides on his daughter (Deneuve again). She's horrified--her fairy godmother (Delphine Seyrig), as well, so she devises a plan for the princess to flee, hidden by a donkey skin. Strange by any standards, Donkey Skin is one of the more magical musicals to emerge from the 1970s. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Jacques Demy's ode to the classic fairy tale by 17th Century author Charles Perrault (Cinderella) comes to life with breathtaking brilliance. Digitally restored and re-mastered under the supervision of Agnès Varda (The Gleaners and I), this epic tale overflows with dazzling color, elaborate costumes and an enchanting score by Academy Award®-winning composer Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg). Catherine Deneuve (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Indochine) stars as a Princess whose father, the King (Jean Marais), seeks her hand in marriage after promising his dying wife to only wed a woman more beautiful than she. Listening to her godmother, the Fairy of Lilacs (Delphine Seyrig), the frightened Princess flees to a neighboring farm and hides as a scullery maid, while wearing the skin of her father's prized donkey as a disguise. A visiting Prince passes by, and an unlikely romance is born.

Venus Beauty Institute

The carefully unattached existence of working girl Nathalie Baye is suddenly upended when lovesick hunk Samuel Le Bihan introduces himself: "My name is Antoine and I love you." Set in a cute glass storefront with a neon pink and blue façade that could have sprung from a Jacques Demy musical, this bittersweet romantic drama was written for the arresting Baye, who plays a middle-aged "girl" in a uniquely Parisian beauty shop that specializes in facials, body treatments, massages, and emotional confession. Her coworkers, young, sweetly guileless brunette cutie Audrey Tautou and gloomy twentysomething Mathilde Seigner, are like glimpses into her past lives, one full of hope and giddy optimism, the other turned resentful from disappointment. She clings to the girly camaraderie and workaday autopilot of her job while her "patronne" (the incomparable Bulle Ogier) nudges her toward responsibility.

Writer-director Tonie Marshall has a marvelous feeling for the women who work and visit the place, though her soulful bohemian artist Le Bihan is defined by little more than good looks, shaggy charm, and a kind of reckless attraction. The film is at its best with the women: the easy by-play and guarded emotions of the shopgirls, the often uncontrolled outbursts of the offbeat and oddball clients, and especially the haunted and lonely performance from Baye, who warily creeps out of her shell for another chance at intimacy. --Sean Axmaker

Les Misérables [Region 2]

This brilliant film manages to reinterpret the story of Victor Hugo's classic novel, critique it, and investigate the nature of art and life on top of that--all in three hours that zip past, fueled by the dynamic performance of French icon Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless, Le Doulos). In 1900, Henri Fortin (Belmondo) is wrongfully imprisoned for murder; his loyal wife is forced into menial labor and prostitution; then in the beginning of World War II, Fortin's son (Belmondo again) helps a Jewish family elude the Nazis, setting in motion his own imprisonment, escape, and adventures as a criminal. Not only is that just the first half of the movie, there are also the story lines of the husband, wife, and daughter of the Jewish family, who each have their own struggles. The conclusion is joyous and heartbreaking. Director Claude Lelouch (A Man and a Woman) handles the entire movie with supreme skill, humor, and compassion. --Bret Fetzer

A Slightly Pregnant Man

Marcello Mastroianni stars as Marco, a Parisian driving instructor who is suddenly proclaimed he is four months pregnant. The ensuing media frenzy includes the medical world proclaiming that the world is changing and it will become an epidemic. Catherine Deneuve also stars as his fiancée in this film by Jacques Demy. Original score by Academy-Award winning composer Michel Legrand.

Bad Company

Jean-Pierre Ameris's 1999 feature Bad Company is a solid, unusually measured drama full of reversed expectations. It is a film about hidden, adolescent torment and the rise of a secret life lived beneath the radar of trusting parents, yet it is an exceptionally bright, pretty, and visually extroverted production. Its subject concerns doomed romanticism, but it is finally an adamantly romantic movie. Two 16-year-old girls, the sheltered Delphine (Maud Forget) and emotionally isolated Olivia (Lou Doillon), pair up as unlikely friends, delve into sexual exploration with a couple of creeps, and agree to let the latter pimp them off in an absurd quest to raise traveling money. One might expect a lot of grit and shock here, but Bad Company is more interested in the elasticity of youthful experience and durability of human dignity. The intense, highly focused performances of the two young leads (Doillon is the daughter of actress Jane Birkin) are remarkable. --Tom Keogh

I Want to Go Home (Je Veux Rentrer A La Maison) (1989)

Alain Resnais, the legendary French director of many groundbreaking films (including Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad), collaborates with American writer / cartoonist Jules Feiffer (Carnal Knowledge) for this raucous satire of French and American culture. Cleveland cartoonist Joey Wellman, played by Singin in the Rain s legendary composer Adolph Green, accepts an invitation to show his work at an exclusive Parisian gallery. But his real motivation is his hope to reconcile with his estranged daughter Elsie (Laura Benson), who is trying to rid herself of her American provinciality by emulating the great French intellectual Christian Gaulthier (Gerard Depardieu - The Last Metro, Cyrano de Bergerac). Scored by John Kander (Cabaret), and with beautifully spirited performances by Green and the dangerously charming Depardieu, I Want to Go Home won Best Screenplay and Best Film awards at the Venice Film Festival. The film also features the American TV star Linda Lavin (Alice). Winner Best Film and Best Screenplay (Venice Film Festival)

Transfixed

TRANSFIXED is a unique detective thriller, replete with unexpected plot twists. Bo Ancellin (Robinson Stévenin), a beautiful, young transsexual with a troubled past, becomes entangled with nosey Police Chief Huysmans (Richard Boringer) as a series of demented killings erupts in Brussels' underground. Each murder and its surrounding circumstances are inexplicably linked to Bo, and it's this cinematic cadence that drives the film.

Her Bridal Night