Véronique Balme

Alphonse, a quadragenarian going through a professional and marital crisis, reconnects with a father he barely knew and discovers a surprising new calling. Along the way, he meets a galaxy of women, each more exciting and quirkier than the last, plunging him into a journey that is both perilous and transgressive, yet filled with kindness.

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Marseille, July 1905. Nearly a teenager, Marcel Pagnol embarks in his last summer vacation before high school and returns, at last, to his beloved hills in Provence. What begins as a summer of boyhood adventures becomes one of the first loves, and unearthed secrets.

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A man in his mid 30's reevaluates his life and priorities after he met someone from his past.

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A modern remake of Renoir's classic film. Aix-en-Provence, a spring night. Christian Lespinglet, an over-indebted gallery owner, rescues a homeless man, Boudu, from the waters of a canal who was trying to drown himself. Heroic to his detriment, he brings him home, for a few hours only... The incongruous arrival of Boudu will act like a mad dog in the game of skittles that is Christian's life...

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Hubert is a French policeman with very sharp methods. After being forced to take 2 months off by his boss, who doesn't share his view on working methods, he goes back to Japan, where he used to work 19 years ago, to settle the probate of his girlfriend who left him shortly after marriage without a trace.

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In this comedy, five French students in their early twenties decide it's time they saw a bit more of the world, so Clementine, Caroline, Lionel, Bruno, and Brigitte buy cut-price rail passes and set out to visit 15 of the great cities of Europe. But it doesn't take long for their great plans to unravel, as the group's desire to see the important sights gets sidetracked by their fondness for partying and the opposite sex, and as they roll through Amsterdam, Berlin, Athens, and Bologna, they stumble into a wide variety of misadventures and meet all manner of unlikely people, from a former teacher who has come rather dramatically out of the closet to a washed-up dance-pop star.

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A dark tale of working-class life in Marseilles, a city in crisis. Interesting characters include a hard-bitten but compassionate fish market worker with a drug addicted daughter and a moody bartender with a shocking secret life.

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In this French drama, a teenager falls into a life of crime, little realizing the consequences. S. is a moody young man who loses his job at a bakery, and decides to throw in his lot with a group of thieves about the same age as himself. S. and his cronies are strictly small-timers, pulling off second-rate break-ins for an older crime boss, but his willingness to do what he's told helps him rise up the ladder to bigger and more lucrative jobs. However, S. lacks the maturity or experience to deal with the risks, and after a few disastrous mistakes, he finds his fortunes sinking far faster than they rose.

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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.

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