News

Cohen Media Group, the U.S. distribution company behind Matteo Garrone’s Oscar-nominated “Io Capitano,” has acquired North American rights to “The President’s Wife,” a biting movie starring Catherine Deneuve as France’s former first lady Bernadette Chirac.

The deal closed during the European Film Market currently taking place and running alongside the Berlin Film Festival.

The movie, which marks the feature debut of director Léa Domenach, is nominated for a Cesar Award for best first film. The deal was negotiated by Robert Aaronson, executive VP of Cohen Media Group, and Charlotte Boucon, head of world sales at Orange Studio — newly acquired by Studiocanal — on behalf of Warner Bros Picture France.

The film opens in 1995, as Jacques Chirac becomes president of France. “His wife Bernadette now expects to be treated with the respect due to her lifelong work in the shadow of her husband. But mocked as too corny, she’s cast aside.

French seller will also market premiere ’Magnificat’ and ’All Because Of The Cat’.

Orange Studio will unveil exclusive first footage from Léa Domenach’s Bernadette starring Catherine Deneuve as former French first lady Bernadette Chirac and from Philippe Lefebvre’s star-powered comedy New Beginnings at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris this week.

Set to be released via Warner Bros. France later in 2023, Bernadette has been one of the French film world’s buzziest titles in recent months since the legendary Deneuve took on the role.

The film follows a fictionalised Bernadette Chirac as she navigates stepping out of the shadows of her husband,...

Dominique Blanc, Gaël Kamilindi, Clément Hervieu-Léger, Michel Vuillermoz, Jennifer Decker, Florence Viala, and Christophe Montenez in Tony Kushner’s Angels In America, directed by Arnaud Desplechin at the Comédie-Française Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage

In the final instalment of my in-depth conversation with Arnaud Desplechin on Oh Mercy!, which received six César nominations, we discussed how a Bob Dylan album and a joke by Kent Jones inspired the title. The director and co-screenwriter (with Léa Mysius) spoke about the influence of Emmanuel Lévinas, the performance by Lumière winner Roschdy Zem as Commissaire Daoud, the costumes by Nathalie Raoul, and the dynamic between Sara Forestier as Marie and Léa Seydoux as Claude.

Lieutenant Cotterel (Antoine Reinartz) confronts Marie (Sara Forestier) and Claude (Léa Seydoux)

Anne-Katrin Titze: Now we’ve chatted more about the animals than about your marvellous actresses. I would like to talk about the frown. The permanent frown on Sara’s face.

Arnaud Desplechin on the roles played by Léa Seydoux, Sara Forestier and Antoine Reinartz in Oh Mercy!: "They look as children.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Arnaud Desplechin’s coruscating Oh Mercy!, co-written with Léa Mysius, received six César nominations: Best Film, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actor (Lumière winner) Roschdy Zem, Supporting Actress Sara Forestier, and Original Score by Grégoire Hetzel. Arnaud’s staging and direction of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, (French text by Pierre Laville) at the Comédie-Française in Paris, starring Michel Vuillermoz as Roy Cohn opened on January 18.

Roschdy Zem won a Lumière and received a César nomination for his portrayal of Commissaire Yacoub Daoud in Oh Mercy!

In the second instalment of my in-depth conversation with Arnaud, he credits The Rider director Chloé Zhao and her cinematographer Joshua James Richards’ framing of horses as an influence. We discuss his screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man...

Virginie Efira stands out among the cast, flanked by the director, Nicolas Marié, Michel Vuillermoz and Jackie Berroyer; production duties have been entrusted to Adcb Films and sales to Gaumont. The first clapperboard is about to slam for the eight-week summer shoot forBye Bye Morons, the seventh feature by Albert Dupontel, following Bernie (nominated for the César Award for Best First Feature Film in 1997), The Creator (1999), Locked Out (2006), Le Vilain (2009), 9 Month Stretch and See You Up There (Special Screening at San Sebastián in 2017; 2.05 million tickets sold in France, 13 nominations for the César Awards in 2018, and victorious in the categories of Best Director, Best Adaptation, Best Cinematography, Best Set Design and Best...

Following its Cannes premiere, My Life as a Zucchini emerged as one of the most acclaimed animated films of the year, selected as Sweden’s Best Foreign Language Film entry at the Oscars, as well as making the Academy Awards shortlist of nine films for Best Animated Film, not to mention a Golden Globe nomination for Best Animated Film.

Even if you don’t care about the awards hoopla, I can confirm it’s definitely one to see out. Directed by Claude Barras and scripted by Céline Sciamma (Girlhood), it tells the story of a boy who becomes orphaned after accidentally killing his alcoholic mother. Fear not though as it’s not as depressing as that logline suggests, with Barras crafting a deeply felt tale of healing, even if it feels a tad too short at just over an hour.

We said in our review, “Orphanages conjure up images of...

SK1 (L’Affaire SK1) director Frédéric Tellier with David Cronenberg's Videodrome at the IFC Center Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Frédéric Tellier’s intense thriller SK1 (L’Affaire SK1) stars Raphaël Personnaz, Nathalie Baye, Olivier Gourmet, Michel Vuillermoz and Adama Niane. SK1, named for the first serial killer identified through DNA analysis in France, is based on journalist Patricia Tourancheau’s book about the case, Guy Georges: La Traque.

Frédéric spoke with me about his upcoming project with SK1 producer Julien Madon, how Bertrand Tavernier's L.627 and Henri Verneuil's Mélodie En Sous-Sol (Any Number Can Win), starring Jean Gabin and Alain Delon, play a detective role, finding his Guy Georges, the nature of evil and the response of the inspectors involved in the case when they saw the film.

Raphaël Personnaz as Charlie Olivier Gourmet as Bougon: "They need this kind of relief, these bubbles of oxygen sometimes."

Baye is Maître Frédérique Pons,...

Time to Leave: Alain Resnais’ Elegant Swan Song

Alain Resnais, that reluctant member of the French New Wave, passed away in March of 2014, not quite two months after the premiere of his last film, Life of Riley, at the Berlin Film Festival. Reaching its theatrical release, the film marks a graceful cap to an extraordinary filmography from a director that specialized in fragmented narratives that play with memory, time, perception, and the complicated nature of human interactions. His final film, while certainly more linear than many of his most famous works, is no exception to his exploration of time and the limited amount of it. Returning with several of his favorite key players, it’s the third Resnais adaptation of an Alan Ayckbourn play (originally titled Aimer, boire et chanter, which translates to Love, Drink and Sing), as charming as ever, presented with its stylized stage artifice.

Three couples...

Life of Riley, which premiered in Berlin just weeks before Alain Resnais died at the age of 91 in March, "often behaves like an unofficial stripped-down sequel to the director's You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet," suggests Chuck Bowen at Slant. This "overpoweringly beautiful final film, looks ever onward, daring to push through the ghosts that inhabit the present, standing between the pessimism of an ill-spent past and the optimism of an undefined future." The cast features Resnais's widow, Sabine Azéma, as well as André Dussollier, Sandrine Kiberlain, Hippolyte Girardot, Caroline Sihol and Michel Vuillermoz. We've got the trailer and we're gathering reviews. » - David Hudson...

Life of Riley, which premiered in Berlin just weeks before Alain Resnais died at the age of 91 in March, "often behaves like an unofficial stripped-down sequel to the director's You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet," suggests Chuck Bowen at Slant. This "overpoweringly beautiful final film, looks ever onward, daring to push through the ghosts that inhabit the present, standing between the pessimism of an ill-spent past and the optimism of an undefined future." The cast features Resnais's widow, Sabine Azéma, as well as André Dussollier, Sandrine Kiberlain, Hippolyte Girardot, Caroline Sihol and Michel Vuillermoz. We've got the trailer and we're gathering reviews. » - David Hudson...

Life of Riley

Written for the screen by Laurent Herbiet and Alain Resnais

Directed by Alain Resnais

France, 2014

Alain Resnais is inarguably one of the most prolific directors to come out of the French New Wave, with nearly 50 films under his belt, including his masterworks Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad, and Night and Fog. Undeterred by age, he seemed to have been working up until the day he died, with his swan song Life of Riley being presented posthumously at this year’s New York Film Festival. Those only familiar with his Nouvelle Vague work will be in for a pleasant surprise: Life of Riley is perhaps more fun that it deserves to be.

Based on the play by Alan Ayckbourn, the film follows two (or three, depending on how you count) couples in the midst of rehearsals for a play, as the news of their friend’s...

Opening Night – World Premiere

Gone Girl

David Fincher, USA, 2014, Dcp, 150m

David Fincher’s film version of Gillian Flynn’s phenomenally successful best seller (adapted by the author) is one wild cinematic ride, a perfectly cast and intensely compressed portrait of a recession-era marriage contained within a devastating depiction of celebrity/media culture, shifting gears as smoothly as a Maserati 250F. Ben Affleck is Nick Dunne, whose wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) goes missing on the day of their fifth anniversary. Neil Patrick Harris is Amy’s old boyfriend Desi, Carrie Coon (who played Honey in Tracy Letts’s acclaimed production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) is Nick’s sister Margo, Kim Dickens (Treme, Friday Night Lights) is Detective Rhonda Boney, and Tyler Perry is Nick’s superstar lawyer Tanner Bolt. At once a grand panoramic vision of middle America, a uniquely disturbing exploration of the fault lines in a marriage,...

It all begins with a freeze frame of a dirt road somewhere in Yorkshire county, lined with trees whose lush foliage converges above in an arch. What could it be if not a portal? The movie itself, meanwhile, has not even started as we watch the opening credits, encased in large old-fashioned frames, slowly fade away—a device consistently favored by Alain Resnais who opened each of his 19 features likewise, holding off the films themselves until the screen no longer contained any visual surplus. The freeze frame comes to life as the camera pans farther down the road; then we find ourselves in a theatrical set.

We have been here before, of course. Resnais' Smoking/No Smoking, also based on a play by British playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn, is set in Yorkshire as well. Life of Riley (Aimer, boire et chanter) borrows from the five-hour diptych its theatrical setting, one...

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood to compete for the Golden Bear; Beauty and the Beast, starring Vincent Cassel and Léa Seydoux, to play out of competition.

The 64th Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 6-16) has added 15 titles to its Competition programme, completing the line-up of 23 films - of which 20 will vye for the Golden Bear and Silver Bears.

The programme includes 18 world premieres and three feature debuts.

The line-up includes the international premiere of Boyhood, from Before Midnight director Richard Linklater. The film, which will premiere at Sundance, was shot over short periods from 2002 to 2013 and covers 12 years in the life of a family, featuring Mason and his sister Samantha. Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater star.

World premieres include In Order of Disappearance, directed by Hans Petter Moland, which stars Stellan Skarsgård as a snow plough driver whose son’s sudden death puts him in the middle of a drug war between theNorwegian mafia and the...

‘71, Life of Riley and Aloft selected. A Long Way Down, The Turning among Berlinale Special titles.

The first seven films selected for the Berlinale Competition programme include Yann Demange’s ‘71, Alan Resnais’ Life of Riley (Aimer, Boire et Chanter) and Claudia Llosa’s Aloft.

Also joining Wes Anderson’s opening film The Grand Budapest Hotel, and George Clooney’s Monuments Men, both announced in November, are Dominik Graf’s Die Geliebten Schwestern and Yannis Economides’ Stratos.

In the Berlinale Special strand are Pascal Chaumeil’s A Long Way Down, Australian anthology film The Turning, Hubert Sauper’s documentary We Come As Friends (Entente Cordiale) and Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller’s doc The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden.

Six of the seven announced main competition titles are world premieres – Monuments Men, which screens out of competition, gets its international premiere.

Chaumeil’s A Long Way Down, starring Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, [link...

A Long Way Down, The Turning among Berlinale Special titles.

The first seven films selected for the Berlinale Competition programme include Yann Demange’s ‘71, Alan Resnais’ Life of Riley (Aimer, Boire et Chanter) and Claudia Llosa’s Aloft.

Also joining Wes Anderson’s opening film The Grand Budapest Hotel, and George Clooney’s Monuments Men, both announced in November, are Dominik Graf’s Die geliebten Schwestern and Yannis Economides’ Stratos.

In the Berlinale Special strand are Pascal Chaumeil’s A Long Way Down [pictured], Australian anthology film The Turning, Hubert Sauper’s documentary We Come As Friends (Entente Cordiale) and Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller’s doc The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden.

Six of the seven announced main competition titles are world premieres – Monuments Men, which screens out of competition, gets its international premiere.

Chaumeil’s A Long Way Down, starring Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Aaron Paul and Imogen Poots, makes its world...

★★★☆☆ Set in 1974, Lionel Baier's Longwave (2013) centres on global broadcasters the Swiss Radio Service. Its French office feels the need for a hit, and that's when its general manager decides to send a troupe to Portugal for a special reportage to investigate Switzerland's aid to poor and developing Southern European countries. The travelling entourage couldn't be more mismatched: Joseph-Marie Cauvin (Michel Vuillermoz), an ageing reporter known for his chauvinistic views and womanising ways, is paired with proto-feminist Julie Dujonc-Renens (Valérie Donzelli), an up-and-coming presenter of all-women programmes.

Stuck between the two primadonnas is quiet soundman Bob (Patrick Lapp), who devoutly sleeps inside his Volkswagen van, surrounded by tape recorders and microphones. The Swiss trio heads to the Portuguese countryside to find out that Swiss money ended up buying the local school clock, faucets that mix hot and cold water, or in putting up a sign for a new housing project that will never be built.

Lionel Baier is a Swiss filmmaker born in 1975, a teacher and an active cinéphile, the director of many documentaries and features, among them Garçon stupide, a refined fiction with a documentary posture (and something in common with the first films by Alain Guiraudie) and Un autre homme, a film about a film critic (a cousin to Louis Skorecki’s trilogy Les Cinéphiles).

Baier belongs to a generation of filmmakers who had to deal with the fact that they were coming “after.” After their own “masters” or mentors, after their own film culture. After the revolutionary movements of the 60s and 70s. After. A source of political and artistic angst that led to choices spanning from whining nostalgia to merciless caricature, from fake indifference to abstract reconstruction, from respectful tributes to philological or critical questioning.

Baier’s new film is a comedy set in 1974, a straightforward filmic charge against Switzerland's “help...

The nominations for the César Awards aka the French Oscars were announced. "Farewell, My Queen," "Amour," "Camille Redouble," "In the House," "Rust & Bone," "Holy Motors," and "What's My Name" are competing for the Best Picture category. We'll find out the winners on February 22nd.

Here's the full list of nominees of the 2013 César Awards:

Best Picture

Farewell, My Queen

Amour

Camille Redouble

In The House

Rust & Bone

Holy Motors

What.s In A Name

Best Director

Benoît Jacquot, Farewell, My Queen

Michael Haneke, Amour

Noémie Lvovsky, Camille Redouble

François Ozon, In The House

Jacques Audiard, Rust & Bone

Leos Carax, Holy Motors

Stéphane Brizé, Quelques Heures De Printemps

Best Actress

Catherine Frot, Les Sauveurs Du Palais

Marion Cotillard, Rust & Bone

Noémie Lvovsky, Camille Redouble

Corinne Masiero, Louise Wimmer

Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

Léa Seydoux, Farewell, My Queen

Hélène Vincent, Quelques Heures De Printemps

Best Actor

Jean-Pierre Bacri, Cherchez Hortense

Patrick Bruel, What...

Alain Resnais’ You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet bears the director’s typical rumination on memory and loss, touching the themes on his cerebral earlier offerings like Hiroshima Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad, or his latest, Wild Grass. In his latest work, several famous French actors gather at the home of a deceased playwright who penned a play that they all starred in at one time or another. As they watch a recent filmed version of the play, they end up getting sucked back into the their former roles. Even though the film is brimming with French talent and with Resnais’ legacy of filmmaking, it never quite adds up to a satisfying whole. The film is perhaps too self-aware and never quite makes it past the surface. The film’s plot is rather simple. Esteemed French actors Mathieu Almaric, Pierre Arditi, Sabine Azéma, Jean-Noël Brouté, Anne Consigny, Anne Duperey, Hippolyte Girardot...

Edouard Waintrop, Artistic Director of Directors' Fortnight, has presented the lineup for this year's edition, running from May 17 through 27.

Features

Merzak Allouache's El Taaib. Evene claims it's an angry film aimed at the malaise of Algerian society.

Rodney Ascher's Room 237. A documentary about the plethora of theories that have sprung up over the years regarding just what Stanley Kubrick was up to when he made The Shining (1980). More here. IFC Midnight picked up North American rights just yesterday.

Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar and Benjamin Renner's Ernest et Célestine. From the makers of A Town Called Panic, this is an animated adaptation of a series of books about a little mouse who doesn't want to become a dentist and a big bear who doesn't want to become a notary. Site.

Benjamin Ávila's Infancia clandestina. From the San Sebastian Film Festival: "Juan lives in clandestinity. Just like his mum,...

Chicago – There’s a very good reason why casual moviegoers are weary of films purporting themselves to be avant-garde. Such a term seems to suggest that a level of effort is required from the audience to fully digest and enjoy a particular work of cinematic art. They are the opposite of disposable entertainments devoured by mainstream viewers like escapist munchies.

In fact, the word “munchies” functions prominently in the jaw-dropping, hotly debated final moment of “Wild Grass,” the latest film from 88-year-old master of cinema, Alain Resnais. The last thing on this filmmaker’s mind is box office results. His greatest wish is merely to inspire audience debate. His most well-known and influential efforts (1959’s “Hiroshima mon amour” and 1961’s “Last Year at Marienbad”) have proven that cinema has the potential to be as complex, as rich, and as widely open to interpretation as literature. He doesn’t care if...

"A Prophet" from director Jacques Audiard won nine awards at the 35th annual Cesar Awards. The Oscar nominated film for best foreign language took home best French film of the year, director, screenplay, editing, cinematography, production design, best actor, and most promising actor (best male newcomer) for Tahar Rahim. Niels Arestrup won best supporting actor also for "A Prophet."

Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino" was named best foreign film of the year, beating out last year's Oscar winner "Slumdog Millionaire" and this year's blue contender, "Avatar."

Meanwhile, "Avatar's" Sigourney Weaver presented Harrison Ford with a Cesar of Honor award. Aw...

Here's the list of nominees and winners of the 35th annual Cesar Awards (winners are highlighted):

Best Film

A l.Origine, Xavier Giannoli

Le Concert, Radu Mihaileanu

Les Herbes Folles, Alain Resnais

La Journee de la Jupe, Jean-Paul Lilienfeld

Rapt, Lucas Belvaux

Un Prophete, Jacques Audiard

Welcome, Philippe Lioret...

Novice feature filmmaker James Huth has turned his affection for Hitchcock, vintage Peter Sellers and pulp crime novels into an absurdist romp.

Falling into a category that may best be described as farce noir, "Serial Lover" is an often wickedly hilarious take on postmodern romance and commitment.

A recent hit on the festival circuit, the highly visual French-language picture could earn itself an enthusiastic cult following in the hands of the right distributor, while establishing Huth as a fresh talent to watch.

Michele Laroque handles her lead duties with deadpan panache in the role of Claire Doste, a single woman who has grown tired of playing the field. Looking for permanence, she uses the occasion of her 35th birthday to throw a little dinner party with a little help from a platonic male friend (Gilles Privat).

The list of invited guests is limited to three of her most recent boyfriends -- (Michel Vuillermoz, Zinedine Soualem and Antoine Basler) -- one of whom will win a trip to city hall for a marriage license by the time the time the evening is up. That, at least, is the plan. But things begin to go horribly, horribly awry in the kitchen when a wayward cat, a high-speed blender and an airborne carving knife collide with rather tragic results.

Now down to two remaining suitors, a frazzled Claire attempts to continue with the festivities, but nasty fate will continue to provide its own system of elimination. As if things could get any worse, a hard-boiled police detective (Albert Dupontel) has been snooping around Claire's fabulous apartment in search of a pair of armed burglars, while her sister (Elise Tielrooy) springs a wild surprise party on her along with about 100 of her closest friends.

Huth manages to make slapstick fun again, incorporating a Rube Goldberg-type intricacy into his ever-outrageous chain reactions along with a hyper sense of style that recalls the 1982 Jean-Jacques Beineix film, "Diva".

And, just when it seems the outlandish events are about to spin irretrievably out of control, he manages to rein it all in again for a second act that is highlighted by a hysterical a cappella rendering of "Only You", reluctantly performed by the two bad guys hiding in a jukebox when that particular selection is chosen.

Dressing it all up in lively retro "lounge a-go-go" attire are production designer Pierre-Emmanuel Chatiliez, costume designer Olivier Beriot and composer Bruno Coulais, who have fun playing with the supposedly contemporary time period.

SERIAL LOVER

A Rezo Films de la Suane/Le Studio Canal Plus/France 2 Cinema/Captain Movies production

Director:James Huth

Screenwriters:James Huth, Romain Berthomieu and Hugo Jacomet

Producer:Philippe Rousselet

Director of photography:Jean-Claude Thibaut

Production designer:Pierre-Emmanuel Chatiliez

Editor:Scott Stevenson

Costume designer:Olivier Beriot

Music:Bruno Coulais

Color/stereo

Cast:

Claire Doste:Michele Laroque

Eric Cellier:Albert Dupontel

Alice Doste:Elise Tielrooy

Charles Thiriot:Michel Vuillermoz

Prince Hakim:Zinedine Soualem

Sacha Peters:Antoine Basler

Ruitchi Di Chichi:Gilles Privat

Running time -- 83 minutes

No MPAA rating...