Gerard depardieu

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This collection includes three films starring talented French actor Gerard Depardieu. The movies included are CHANGING TIMES, THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, and TOUS LES MATINS DU MONDE. Please see individual titles for synopsis information.

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One of the great satirists of Italian cinema, controversial filmmaker Marco Ferreri often used shock value to draw conclusions about the excesses of modern life. This collection unites eight of the master's greatest works of artful grotesque, including BYE BYE MONKEY, starring Gerard Depardieu and Marcello Mastroianni, and LE GRAND BOUFFE (THE BIG FEAST), the critically-acclaimed story of four men intent on eating themselves to death.

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This World War I mystery finds limitless beauty in the nostalgia of loss. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, whose whimsical AMELIE riveted audiences, A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT also stars Audrey Tautou--the 21st century's Audrey Hepburn--in the stubbornly emotional role of a widow in denial. Here she is Mathilde, a waifish young woman with a pronounced limp from childhood polio. Living with her quirky aunt and uncle in a farmhouse by the sea, and waiting desperately for her fiance Manech (Gaspard Ulliel) to return from the war, she believes that if he were truly lost she would feel it in her heart. Thus, when the bad news arrives--Manech and five fellow soldiers were exiled to No Man's Land for shooting off their own fingers in hope of being discharged--Mathilde refuses to believe he is dead. Instead, she begins her own investigation into Manech's infantry, hiring a private detective and tracking down the wives and girlfriends of each of Manech's compatriots. Conducting countless interviews, Mathilde pieces together Manech's war stories--which are told in earthshaking flashbacks involving gruesome explosions, flying guts, and massive suffering. And yet, the all-in-this-together humanity of these awful scenes, and the heartfelt bravery with which Mathilde absorbs the details of each battle, is undeniably moving. Jodie Foster appears as Elodie, one of the widows, in a charismatic yet muted performance and with a flawless accent. However, the most intriguing of the widows is Tina Lombardi (Marion Cotillard), a thrilling dominatrix-assassin bent on avenging her lover. A timeless masterwork that raises the bar for breathtaking camerawork, vivid landscapes, and fantastical storytelling, A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT is adapted from the novel by Sebastien Japriscot.

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For a length of his career, actor Leonardo DiCaprio teetered on the line between squeal-inducing heartthrob and artist with an eye for wild and challenging projects. Witness the latter side win out in this triple feature of Danny Boyle's hallucinogenic cult thriller THE BEACH, the classic historical adaptation THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, and Baz Luhrmann's modernized yet decidedly Shakespearean ROMEO + JULIET. See individual titles for complete details.

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Former safecracker Gino's (Alain Delon, PLEIN SOLEIL) plans for a new life upon his release from jail encounter obstacles from all sides in this crime drama from French director José Giovanni. After serving a ten-year stint in prison, Gino heads to the South of France to take a job in a print shop, and begins a romance with Lucie (Mimsy Farmer, THE BLACK CAT). Gino finds help in his endeavors to reform his life in liberal prison reformer Germain (Jean Gabin, VERDICT), though he is beset with deprivation and hardship due to the stigma of having served time. A cop with an old bone to pick makes it difficult for Gino to stay on the straight path, however, and news of his old gang's plan to target the bank where Lucie works lures him back into the fray. Gérard Depardieu (36 QUAI DES ORFEVRES, 102 DALMATIONS) also appears with an early role in this compelling drama.

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LA CHEVRE introduced the popular comic duo of Gerard Depardieu and Pierre Richard, who went on to star in a number of other films together. Here they are François Perrin (Richard) and Campana (Depardieu), two bumbling detectives hired to find the twenty-year-old daughter of a wealthy industrialist. Their travels range from the boardrooms of a huge multinational conglomerate to the tropics of Mexico, in search of the industrialist's accident prone daughter. Remade in America as PURE LUCK.

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After her 17 year-old son disappears, a resourceful and charming woman named Christine enlists the aid of two of her former lovers by convincing each of them that they are the young man's father. It isn't long before both men, François Pignon and Jean Lucas, are bumbling their way around France, looking for their long lost son. Soon, the two happen to meet by chance, explain to each other that they're looking for their lost son, and decide to team up, forming one of the oddest and most inept partnerships France has ever seen.

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In this witty commentary on political correctness in the work place, Francois Veber directs the excellent Daniel Auteuil as Francois Pignon, better known around the office as "Pignon le Mignon" (Pignon the Cutey). Poor Pignon is helplessly misunderstood and pathetically down on his luck. A senior executive at a small corporation, Pignon overhears rumors that he is going to be fired. On top of a difficult relationship with his ex-wife and a failing relationship with his sullen teenage son, the idea of losing his job and becoming incapable of making alimony payments is unfathomable. Pignon feels totally defeated--like a real loser. That's why, when Pignon's next door neighbor (Michel Aumont) offers a solution to his problems, Pignon is quick to accept: He comes out of the closet, convincing his coworkers that he is gay, and making it improbable that the company would fire him at risk of legal action. But before he knows it, Pignon's plan has backfired and metamorphosed in hilarious ways, causing a string of bizarre office-related situations and family dilemmas that are both complex and comic.

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Alexandre Dumas' THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO follows the adventures of Edmond Dantès (Gérard Depardieu), a 19th-century French version of James Bond or Batman, a rich, ruthless, and suave purveyor of homemade justice. This French production goes all out, having the destinction of being the first filmed version of the newly restored unabridged version of Dumas' classic, which runs about 800 pages. The movie was filmed all over Europe, has a cast of thousands where even the extras are big names, and, with an original running time of more than six hours, doesn't leave out any detail from the celebrated novel.

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This sprawling romantic tale tells the story of composer Sainte Colombe--who worked in France during the 17th century--and his talented student Marin Marais.

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Re-teaming French icons Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu for their sixth on-screen pairing, CHANGING TIMES is a complex and dolorous look at the life of Cecile (Deneuve), a French expatriate living in the changing city of Tangiers with her Moroccan doctor husband, Nathan (Gilbert Melki). After their 20-something son, Sami (Malik Zidi), his pill-popping girlfriend, Nadia (Lubna Azabal), and their nine-year-old become unexpected houseguests, Cecile and Nathan have new things to focus on besides the routine-ness of their marriage. Enter Antoine (Depardieu), who found first love with Cecile 30 years before, and has come to Tangiers on business--and with the intention of rekindling a romance with her. But when a work-related accident at a construction site sends him into a coma, it looks like Antoine's plans may never work out. With a rich, bleak tapestry of intersecting characters, CHANGING TIMES places a realistic look at love and relationships against the devastating effects of globalization. While any filmgoer would be pleased to see Deneuve and Depardieu together again on film, Techine throws an engrossing curveball by giving us scene after scene in which Cecile and Antoine are clearly ill-at-ease with each other--and often with unpleasant results. CHANGING TIMES doesn't aim to please--instead, Techine shows the messy ways in which families and lovers interact, understanding that there are not always easy resolutions or happy endings. Depardieu's Andre is sad, but hopeful--an imposing figure with a soft heart--while Deneuve is allowed to gloriously look her age in a refined and restrained performance.

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Gerard Depardieu won the Best Actor award at Cannes for his performance as Cyrano in this lavish adaptation of Edmond Rostand's 1897 play. Academy Award Nominations: 4, including Best Actor--Gerard Depardieu. Academy Awards: Best Costume Design.

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Leo (Gerard Depardieu) is a highly successful novelist who has just won the Nobel Prize. Unfortunately, he has been an emotionally distant failure as a father, forcing his twenty-something son, Paul (Depardieu's real-life son, Guillame) to live in his shadow. While travelling, Leo is kidnapped by Paul, and tries to make one last attempt to establish a true connection with his father. Sylvie Testud (THE CHATEAU) costars in this darkly comic tale of family dysfunction.

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JEAN DE FLORETTE is the first of two parts of the classic Marcel Pagnol story set in southeast France in the mid 1920s. In a small Provençal village, where water is scarce and the earth dry, only one piece of property possesses an underground spring to irrigate the soil--and the wily, greedy César (Yves Montand) will do anything to get hold of it. His dreams seem on the verge of coming true when the owner (with a little help from César) dies unexpectedly. But then Jean Cadoret (Gerard Depardieu), an outsider who inherits the farm, arrives with the intention of settling down and cultivating the land with his good-hearted wife, Aimee (played by Depardieu's real wife, Elisabeth Depardieu), and his young daughter, Manon (Ernestine Mazurowna). Jean, a hunchback and sensitive dreamer, glories in his new life while César and his nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) secretly decide to stop up the spring so his plans will fail. The good-hearted Jean, too naive to imagine that anyone would sabotage him, struggles fruitlessly to make his garden bloom. His continual failure erodes his spirit, setting the stage for a tragedy with consequences for all. Director Claude Berri focuses a well-trained eye on the heart-stopping scenery of the rural Provençal landscape in this beautifully filmed tragedy, establishing a farmer's reverence for his land and native soil. Gerard Depardieu delivers an unforgettable performance as the failed dreamer. MANON OF THE SPRING: This sequel to 1986's JEAN DE FLORETTE stars Emmanuelle Béart as Manon (the daughter of JEAN DE FLORETTE's protagonist). Manon has grown up to become a beautiful woman, a shy and resourceful shepherdess who lives in relative seclusion from the townspeople of her Provençal village, haunted by the tragic death of her father (played by Gerard Depardieu in part one). An outsider like her father, Manon stays high up in the rugged hills, preferring the company of her sheep to her nearby neighbors César (Yves Montand) and Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil). One fateful day, Manon discovers the real reason why her father's spring ran dry and comes up with a powerful revenge to exact on the men responsible for her father's downfall. Manon's action changes her life forever and uncovers long-hidden family secrets that powerfully affect the local villagers. This charming and poignant fable, based on Marcel Pagnol's classic story, is a richly filmed tale of a small triumph over tragedy. Emmanuelle Béart's beauty radiates throughout the film; she delivers a subtle and captivating performance. Once again, director Claude Berri films with a sensitive eye for the wild beauty of the French countryside that perfectly complements the seductive and earthy beauty of its nubile young star.

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A determined woman endeavors to keep her Jewish husband's theatre operating while the Nazis occupy Paris. Each night, she visits her husband who is hiding in a secret apartment under the stage. Winner of ten French Cesar awards.

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Bernardo Bertolucci's vast historical melodrama used the massive popular, critical, and financial success of its predecessor, the scandalous LAST TANGO IN PARIS, to mount a production of epic scale. Cut down to four hours for its American release, the film utilizes an all-star Hollywood cast to tell its heavily Marxist tale of Italian peasants during the twentieth century. Two boys born on the same day are destined for divergent paths; Olmo (played by Gerard Depardeiu as an adult) is born to peasant parents and will become a passionate socialist, while Alfredo's (Robert De Niro as an adult) bourgeois, landowning origins will lead him to ultimately embrace fascism. Driven by a sincere hope for and belief in political change, Bertolucci's film is nonetheless made up of very humane individual stories; it concentrates on highly personal experiences of a politically-charged time, which color the little dramas of love, sex, family, and community. It is at once an epic poem and a political manifesto, and it is the product of a director who was unabashedly communist in his youth, contrasting markedly with later works like 2003's THE DREAMERS. The fact that 1900 managed to get released by a major American studio during the height of the Cold War is remarkable in itself, and this fact possibly accounts for the film's lack of popular success when first encountered by audiences. The final sequence, which portrays the Italian peasants overthrowing their fascist masters and dancing beneath the red flag of Communism, sparked controversy on all sides, with the left criticizing it for historical inaccuracy, and the right obviously inflamed by the glorification of Communism. Bertolucci himself called it a dream sequence, an anticipation of the revolution yet to come, and indeed the entire movie is something of a celebration of the human spirit and the will to overcome.

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Starring Gérard Depardieu and Emmanuelle Béart, NATHALIE follows an unusual friendship as it awkwardly blossoms between two women. Catherine (Fanny Ardent) discovers that her husband (Depardieu) has cheated on her, and hires a prostitute, Nathalie (Béart), to seduce him. But when Nathalie reports back to Catherine on the liaison, the two women bond despite Catherine finding it hard to trust what her hired hand tells her.

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Directed by Roman Coppola (the son of Francis Ford Coppola and brother of Sofia) in his feature film debut, CQ follows Paul (Jeremy Davies), an aspiring American filmmaker living in Paris circa 1969 with his French girlfriend, Marlene (Élodie Boulez). When Paul's not in his flat making an angst-ridden home movie and treating Marlene with complete indifference, he's working as a editor on a sci-fi film helmed by the volatile Andrezej (Gérard Depardieu) and starring the beautiful Valentine (Angela Lindvall) as Dragonfly, a sexy secret agent. After a tense fight between Andrezej and the film's producer (Giancarlo Giannini), Paul is promoted to director, leaving him with an unfinished film and a growing infatuation with Valentine. A tribute to late-1960s guilty pleasures such as BARBARELLA and DANGER: DIABOLIK, CQ even goes so far as to include John Phillip Law (who starred in both films) in a minor role. Coppola's film also places one foot in the film-about-film genre, with many references to French New Wave cinema that particularly pop up in Paul's autobiographical movie. With it's immaculate 1969 period design and eclectic supporting cast--including Jason Schwartzman, Dean Stockwell, and Billy Zane--CQ makes for a unique look at the strange world of making movies.

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According to Marlene Dietrich, chanteuse Edith Piaf's voice was "the soul of Paris." This French drama explores the often troubled life of the singer as her fame took her from the City of Lights to America to the South of France. Abandoned by her mother, Piaf grew up in her grandmother's brothel and her father's circus, which is hardly the fun one might imagine. While singing on the streets of Paris as a teen, Piaf (played as an adult by Marion Cotillard, A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT) is discovered by club owner Louis Leplée (Gérard Depardieu), and this chance encounter changes the woman's life. Her powerful voice takes her all over the globe, but it can't guard her from the pain and suffering she can't avoid. As Piaf, Cotillard is mesmerizing. She fully inhabits the singer's ivory skin, crafting a character that never descends into caricature or camp. She lip syncs to Piaf's legendary voice, but the performance is seamless. Like WALK THE LINE and RAY, this biopic creates a fascinating picture of an artist whose songs only begin to reflect the singer's painful life. But director-writer Olivier Dahan (LA VIE PROMISE) doesn't take the traditional biopic route with LA VIE EN ROSE. Instead, the film jumps between various moments in the singer's life, with little concern for linear narrative. Cotillard is just as adept at playing the teenage Piaf as she is the songbird on her deathbed at the age of 47, and it's her amazing performance that makes LA VIE EN ROSE worth seeing.

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Actor Matt Dillon (OVER THE EDGE, THE OUTSIDERS) makes his directorial debut with CITY OF GHOSTS, an atmospheric thriller about an American man who finds himself in a very dangerous Cambodia. Dillon plays Jimmy Cremmins, a New York scam artist who has been working as a front man for a phony insurance company established by his employer, Marvin (James Caan). When the scam is exposed, Jimmy heads for Bangkok, where he meets an associate, Kaspar (Stellan Skarsgard), who informs him that Marvin is in Cambodia. Soon, Jimmy is prowling the streets of the downtrodden city, trying to solve a mystery that gets more convoluted every day. Along the way, he meets the beautiful Sophie (Natascha McElhone), an artist who wants Jimmy to leave his troubles behind. But Jimmy can't abandon Marvin that easily, for reasons that only he appears to know. Written by Dillon and novelist/friend Barry Gifford (WILD AT HEART), CITY OF GHOSTS is an ambitious, entertaining mood piece that features enough twists and turns for three movies. Gerard Depardieu steals the show as an easily excitable bar/hotel proprietor.