Catherine Deneuve: Style, beauty, and talent on TCM tonight A day to rejoice on Turner Classic Movies: Catherine Deneuve, one of the few true Living Film Legends, is TCM’s "Summer Under the Stars" star today, August 12, 2013. Catherine Deneuve is not only one of the most beautiful film actresses ever, she’s also one of the very best. In fact, the more mature her looks, the more fascinating she has become. Though, admittedly, Deneuve has always been great to look at, and she has been a mesmerizing screen presence since at least the early ’80s. ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’: One of the greatest movie musicals ever Right now, TCM is showing one of the greatest movie musicals ever made, Jacques Demy’s Palme d’Or winner The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), in which a very blonde, very young, very pretty, and very dubbed Catherine Deneuve (singing voice by Danielle Licari...
- 8/13/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Director Olivier Dahan made a big impression with his first full-length feature, a film noir entitled "Already Dead". His eagerly awaited second movie, "Le Petit Poucet" ("Tom Thumb"), moves from one genre to another. This time he has made a horror movie, but a horror movie with a twist -- it is seemingly aimed at children.
"Le Petit Poucet" is based on a children's story by Charles Perrault, but moviegoers expecting a Disney-like tale of simple folk will be sorely disappointed. The movie opened strongly with more than 50,000 admissions on the first day with audiences undoubtedly drawn by the glittering cast of Catherine Deneuve, Romane Bohringer and Samy Naceri.
Poucet (Nils Hugon) is the youngest of five brothers born to a desperately poor peasant family. The mother (Bohringer) and father (Pierre Berriau) struggle to feed the family. Then war is declared and all food is requisitioned, first by the enemy and then by the government.
The parents decide they would rather leave the children to fend for themselves in the forest than watch them die of hunger. Poucet overhears their plan and manages to save his brothers by leaving a trail they follow back home. A second attempt at abandoning the children is more successful and Poucet and his brothers are caught up in a spine-chilling adventure that includes baying wolves and a child-eating ogre. This being a fairy-tale, the ending is predictably happy ever after, but not before an average 6-year-old will be screaming to go home.
Dahan shot the movie entirely in the studio, doing his best to create a somber mood. This is a twilight world never troubled with sunlight. The sky is either slate gray or blood red and the forest is a mist-soaked, foreboding place.
Into this hellish existence, Dahan drops two horrific characters: a soldier with an iron leg (Naceri), who wants to burn the children to death on a bonfire, and a seven-foot tall-ogre (Dominque Hulin) who wears an iron mask with huge metal fangs.
Classic children's stories are no stranger to frightening characters and base their very existence on a panoply of witches, giants, ogres and wolves. But there is a huge difference between fear and terror. "Le Petit Poucet" relies heavily on well-honed, horror-movie techniques. In one scene, where the ogre stabs his own daughters to death, the shot of the flashing knife is accompanied by a pastiche of the music from the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". Dahan demands of a young audience a maturity and sophistication that is beyond their capabilities.
The younger members of the cast perform well and appear suitably terrified, although one asks just how much of this is due to their acting ability. The adult actors are required to do very little and are often upstaged by costumes and makeup. Dahan would have done well to pay less attention to form and more to content.
LE PETIT POUCET
La Chauve-Souris
Producer: Eric Neve
Director: Olivier Dahan
Writers: Olivier Dahan, Agnes Fustier-Dahan
Music: Joe Hisaishi
Set designer: Michel Barthelemy
Costume designer: Gigi Lepage
Editor: Juliette Welfling
Stereo/color
Cast:
Poucet: Nils Hugon
Rose: Hanna Berthault
Poucet's mother: Romane Bohringer
Poucet's father: Pierre Berriau
Ogre: Dominque Hulin
Ogre's wife: Elodie Bouchez
Soldier with iron leg: Samy Naceri
The Queen: Catherine Deneuve
Running time -- 90 minutes
No MPPA rating...
"Le Petit Poucet" is based on a children's story by Charles Perrault, but moviegoers expecting a Disney-like tale of simple folk will be sorely disappointed. The movie opened strongly with more than 50,000 admissions on the first day with audiences undoubtedly drawn by the glittering cast of Catherine Deneuve, Romane Bohringer and Samy Naceri.
Poucet (Nils Hugon) is the youngest of five brothers born to a desperately poor peasant family. The mother (Bohringer) and father (Pierre Berriau) struggle to feed the family. Then war is declared and all food is requisitioned, first by the enemy and then by the government.
The parents decide they would rather leave the children to fend for themselves in the forest than watch them die of hunger. Poucet overhears their plan and manages to save his brothers by leaving a trail they follow back home. A second attempt at abandoning the children is more successful and Poucet and his brothers are caught up in a spine-chilling adventure that includes baying wolves and a child-eating ogre. This being a fairy-tale, the ending is predictably happy ever after, but not before an average 6-year-old will be screaming to go home.
Dahan shot the movie entirely in the studio, doing his best to create a somber mood. This is a twilight world never troubled with sunlight. The sky is either slate gray or blood red and the forest is a mist-soaked, foreboding place.
Into this hellish existence, Dahan drops two horrific characters: a soldier with an iron leg (Naceri), who wants to burn the children to death on a bonfire, and a seven-foot tall-ogre (Dominque Hulin) who wears an iron mask with huge metal fangs.
Classic children's stories are no stranger to frightening characters and base their very existence on a panoply of witches, giants, ogres and wolves. But there is a huge difference between fear and terror. "Le Petit Poucet" relies heavily on well-honed, horror-movie techniques. In one scene, where the ogre stabs his own daughters to death, the shot of the flashing knife is accompanied by a pastiche of the music from the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". Dahan demands of a young audience a maturity and sophistication that is beyond their capabilities.
The younger members of the cast perform well and appear suitably terrified, although one asks just how much of this is due to their acting ability. The adult actors are required to do very little and are often upstaged by costumes and makeup. Dahan would have done well to pay less attention to form and more to content.
LE PETIT POUCET
La Chauve-Souris
Producer: Eric Neve
Director: Olivier Dahan
Writers: Olivier Dahan, Agnes Fustier-Dahan
Music: Joe Hisaishi
Set designer: Michel Barthelemy
Costume designer: Gigi Lepage
Editor: Juliette Welfling
Stereo/color
Cast:
Poucet: Nils Hugon
Rose: Hanna Berthault
Poucet's mother: Romane Bohringer
Poucet's father: Pierre Berriau
Ogre: Dominque Hulin
Ogre's wife: Elodie Bouchez
Soldier with iron leg: Samy Naceri
The Queen: Catherine Deneuve
Running time -- 90 minutes
No MPPA rating...
Herve Le Roux's "They Call It Spring" (On Appelle ca le Printemps) attempts to be an update of a French Enlightenment comedy, reworking the theme of love's inevitability for a modern Parisian setting. For a while, it floats along with a fresh, quirky cheerfulness as it follows three middle-aged women who have shed the men in their lives. But Le Roux, a former Cahiers du Cinema critic, loses his way in the last half-hour, taking extended detours into territories hostile to his initial, gently comic vision.
The movie, which had its U.S. debut at the San Francisco International Film Festival, has no domestic distributor as yet. Its novel take on the midlife crises of women could have boxoffice potential on the art house circuit. But Le Roux and screenwriter Renee Falson's eccentric bypathsultimately render the film directionless.
The film begins with three male singers costumed in frilly, 18th century court dress. Their waggish lyrics feature lines like "Be prepared to swoon/All noise leads to tune." The song ends with the performers barking, meowing and braying to the music. The men, it turns out, are contemporary Parisians, rehearsing a stage revue. (Their rehearsals crop up throughout the film, and the end credits roll over yet another song.)
Joss (Marie Matheron), wife to one of the vocalists (Pierre Berriau), is abandoning him for her female lover. On the way, she receives a call from her friend Fanfan (Maryse Cupaiolo), whose boyfriend (Antoine Choppey) is busy tossing her belongings out the window. After Fanfan rescues her property -- which includes a large catfish -- she and Joss flee to Joss' lover, only to discover her with another woman.
Fanfan's sister Manu (Marilyne Canto) provides refuge, but she's juggling two men on her own: her live-in lover Mytch (Michel Bompoil) and the comfortable, undemanding Jean (Laszlo Szabo). Mytch discovers the affair, and soon everyone's out on the street.
It's often fun to see the film break from convention and watch grown women behave like irresponsible adolescents rather than remaining the voices of mature sobriety while their men screw up. The women plot revenge and seek new, more satisfying entanglements, but they're also surprisingly content in their new lives of limbo.
As this comic minuet progresses, though, Le Roux and Falson seem to run out of ideas, adding several sequences of protracted filler. There's a lovely montage in which the three women spirit Joss' daughter away for a day, and the women dance and skip like enchantresses with their freshly snatched changeling. But the scene is out of step with the rest of the movie, seemingly from another film.
Le Roux also adds an irritatingly endless sequence of slapstick when the women have to hide from the wife of a man who's sheltering them. And a long costume ball finale lacks humor and surprise, not accomplishing much for the amount of time it takes.
THEY CALL IT SPRING
Agat Films et Cie
Credits:
Producer: Gilles Sandoz
Director: Herve Le Roux
Screenwriter: Renee Falson
Director of photography: Pierre Milon
Production designer: Patrick Durand
Music supervisor: Pierre Allio
Costume designer: Corinne le Flem
Editor: Nadine Tarbouriech. Cast: Paul: Pierre Berriau
Joss: Marie Matheron
Lise: Margaux Hocquard
Fanfan: Maryse Cupaiolo
Charles: Antoine Chappey
Manu: Marilyne Canto
Jean: Laszlo Szabo
Mytch: Michel Bompoil
Claude: Bernard Ballet
No MPAA rating
Color/stereo
Running time -- 103 minutes...
The movie, which had its U.S. debut at the San Francisco International Film Festival, has no domestic distributor as yet. Its novel take on the midlife crises of women could have boxoffice potential on the art house circuit. But Le Roux and screenwriter Renee Falson's eccentric bypathsultimately render the film directionless.
The film begins with three male singers costumed in frilly, 18th century court dress. Their waggish lyrics feature lines like "Be prepared to swoon/All noise leads to tune." The song ends with the performers barking, meowing and braying to the music. The men, it turns out, are contemporary Parisians, rehearsing a stage revue. (Their rehearsals crop up throughout the film, and the end credits roll over yet another song.)
Joss (Marie Matheron), wife to one of the vocalists (Pierre Berriau), is abandoning him for her female lover. On the way, she receives a call from her friend Fanfan (Maryse Cupaiolo), whose boyfriend (Antoine Choppey) is busy tossing her belongings out the window. After Fanfan rescues her property -- which includes a large catfish -- she and Joss flee to Joss' lover, only to discover her with another woman.
Fanfan's sister Manu (Marilyne Canto) provides refuge, but she's juggling two men on her own: her live-in lover Mytch (Michel Bompoil) and the comfortable, undemanding Jean (Laszlo Szabo). Mytch discovers the affair, and soon everyone's out on the street.
It's often fun to see the film break from convention and watch grown women behave like irresponsible adolescents rather than remaining the voices of mature sobriety while their men screw up. The women plot revenge and seek new, more satisfying entanglements, but they're also surprisingly content in their new lives of limbo.
As this comic minuet progresses, though, Le Roux and Falson seem to run out of ideas, adding several sequences of protracted filler. There's a lovely montage in which the three women spirit Joss' daughter away for a day, and the women dance and skip like enchantresses with their freshly snatched changeling. But the scene is out of step with the rest of the movie, seemingly from another film.
Le Roux also adds an irritatingly endless sequence of slapstick when the women have to hide from the wife of a man who's sheltering them. And a long costume ball finale lacks humor and surprise, not accomplishing much for the amount of time it takes.
THEY CALL IT SPRING
Agat Films et Cie
Credits:
Producer: Gilles Sandoz
Director: Herve Le Roux
Screenwriter: Renee Falson
Director of photography: Pierre Milon
Production designer: Patrick Durand
Music supervisor: Pierre Allio
Costume designer: Corinne le Flem
Editor: Nadine Tarbouriech. Cast: Paul: Pierre Berriau
Joss: Marie Matheron
Lise: Margaux Hocquard
Fanfan: Maryse Cupaiolo
Charles: Antoine Chappey
Manu: Marilyne Canto
Jean: Laszlo Szabo
Mytch: Michel Bompoil
Claude: Bernard Ballet
No MPAA rating
Color/stereo
Running time -- 103 minutes...
Director Olivier Dahan made a big impression with his first full-length feature, a film noir entitled "Already Dead". His eagerly awaited second movie, "Le Petit Poucet" ("Tom Thumb"), moves from one genre to another. This time he has made a horror movie, but a horror movie with a twist -- it is seemingly aimed at children.
"Le Petit Poucet" is based on a children's story by Charles Perrault, but moviegoers expecting a Disney-like tale of simple folk will be sorely disappointed. The movie opened strongly with more than 50,000 admissions on the first day with audiences undoubtedly drawn by the glittering cast of Catherine Deneuve, Romane Bohringer and Samy Naceri.
Poucet (Nils Hugon) is the youngest of five brothers born to a desperately poor peasant family. The mother (Bohringer) and father (Pierre Berriau) struggle to feed the family. Then war is declared and all food is requisitioned, first by the enemy and then by the government.
The parents decide they would rather leave the children to fend for themselves in the forest than watch them die of hunger. Poucet overhears their plan and manages to save his brothers by leaving a trail they follow back home. A second attempt at abandoning the children is more successful and Poucet and his brothers are caught up in a spine-chilling adventure that includes baying wolves and a child-eating ogre. This being a fairy-tale, the ending is predictably happy ever after, but not before an average 6-year-old will be screaming to go home.
Dahan shot the movie entirely in the studio, doing his best to create a somber mood. This is a twilight world never troubled with sunlight. The sky is either slate gray or blood red and the forest is a mist-soaked, foreboding place.
Into this hellish existence, Dahan drops two horrific characters: a soldier with an iron leg (Naceri), who wants to burn the children to death on a bonfire, and a seven-foot tall-ogre (Dominque Hulin) who wears an iron mask with huge metal fangs.
Classic children's stories are no stranger to frightening characters and base their very existence on a panoply of witches, giants, ogres and wolves. But there is a huge difference between fear and terror. "Le Petit Poucet" relies heavily on well-honed, horror-movie techniques. In one scene, where the ogre stabs his own daughters to death, the shot of the flashing knife is accompanied by a pastiche of the music from the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". Dahan demands of a young audience a maturity and sophistication that is beyond their capabilities.
The younger members of the cast perform well and appear suitably terrified, although one asks just how much of this is due to their acting ability. The adult actors are required to do very little and are often upstaged by costumes and makeup. Dahan would have done well to pay less attention to form and more to content.
LE PETIT POUCET
La Chauve-Souris
Producer: Eric Neve
Director: Olivier Dahan
Writers: Olivier Dahan, Agnes Fustier-Dahan
Music: Joe Hisaishi
Set designer: Michel Barthelemy
Costume designer: Gigi Lepage
Editor: Juliette Welfling
Stereo/color
Cast:
Poucet: Nils Hugon
Rose: Hanna Berthault
Poucet's mother: Romane Bohringer
Poucet's father: Pierre Berriau
Ogre: Dominque Hulin
Ogre's wife: Elodie Bouchez
Soldier with iron leg: Samy Naceri
The Queen: Catherine Deneuve
Running time -- 90 minutes
No MPPA rating...
"Le Petit Poucet" is based on a children's story by Charles Perrault, but moviegoers expecting a Disney-like tale of simple folk will be sorely disappointed. The movie opened strongly with more than 50,000 admissions on the first day with audiences undoubtedly drawn by the glittering cast of Catherine Deneuve, Romane Bohringer and Samy Naceri.
Poucet (Nils Hugon) is the youngest of five brothers born to a desperately poor peasant family. The mother (Bohringer) and father (Pierre Berriau) struggle to feed the family. Then war is declared and all food is requisitioned, first by the enemy and then by the government.
The parents decide they would rather leave the children to fend for themselves in the forest than watch them die of hunger. Poucet overhears their plan and manages to save his brothers by leaving a trail they follow back home. A second attempt at abandoning the children is more successful and Poucet and his brothers are caught up in a spine-chilling adventure that includes baying wolves and a child-eating ogre. This being a fairy-tale, the ending is predictably happy ever after, but not before an average 6-year-old will be screaming to go home.
Dahan shot the movie entirely in the studio, doing his best to create a somber mood. This is a twilight world never troubled with sunlight. The sky is either slate gray or blood red and the forest is a mist-soaked, foreboding place.
Into this hellish existence, Dahan drops two horrific characters: a soldier with an iron leg (Naceri), who wants to burn the children to death on a bonfire, and a seven-foot tall-ogre (Dominque Hulin) who wears an iron mask with huge metal fangs.
Classic children's stories are no stranger to frightening characters and base their very existence on a panoply of witches, giants, ogres and wolves. But there is a huge difference between fear and terror. "Le Petit Poucet" relies heavily on well-honed, horror-movie techniques. In one scene, where the ogre stabs his own daughters to death, the shot of the flashing knife is accompanied by a pastiche of the music from the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". Dahan demands of a young audience a maturity and sophistication that is beyond their capabilities.
The younger members of the cast perform well and appear suitably terrified, although one asks just how much of this is due to their acting ability. The adult actors are required to do very little and are often upstaged by costumes and makeup. Dahan would have done well to pay less attention to form and more to content.
LE PETIT POUCET
La Chauve-Souris
Producer: Eric Neve
Director: Olivier Dahan
Writers: Olivier Dahan, Agnes Fustier-Dahan
Music: Joe Hisaishi
Set designer: Michel Barthelemy
Costume designer: Gigi Lepage
Editor: Juliette Welfling
Stereo/color
Cast:
Poucet: Nils Hugon
Rose: Hanna Berthault
Poucet's mother: Romane Bohringer
Poucet's father: Pierre Berriau
Ogre: Dominque Hulin
Ogre's wife: Elodie Bouchez
Soldier with iron leg: Samy Naceri
The Queen: Catherine Deneuve
Running time -- 90 minutes
No MPPA rating...
- 11/7/2001
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Herve Le Roux's "They Call It Spring" (On Appelle ca le Printemps) attempts to be an update of a French Enlightenment comedy, reworking the theme of love's inevitability for a modern Parisian setting. For a while, it floats along with a fresh, quirky cheerfulness as it follows three middle-aged women who have shed the men in their lives. But Le Roux, a former Cahiers du Cinema critic, loses his way in the last half-hour, taking extended detours into territories hostile to his initial, gently comic vision.
The movie, which had its U.S. debut at the San Francisco International Film Festival, has no domestic distributor as yet. Its novel take on the midlife crises of women could have boxoffice potential on the art house circuit. But Le Roux and screenwriter Renee Falson's eccentric bypathsultimately render the film directionless.
The film begins with three male singers costumed in frilly, 18th century court dress. Their waggish lyrics feature lines like "Be prepared to swoon/All noise leads to tune." The song ends with the performers barking, meowing and braying to the music. The men, it turns out, are contemporary Parisians, rehearsing a stage revue. (Their rehearsals crop up throughout the film, and the end credits roll over yet another song.)
Joss (Marie Matheron), wife to one of the vocalists (Pierre Berriau), is abandoning him for her female lover. On the way, she receives a call from her friend Fanfan (Maryse Cupaiolo), whose boyfriend (Antoine Choppey) is busy tossing her belongings out the window. After Fanfan rescues her property -- which includes a large catfish -- she and Joss flee to Joss' lover, only to discover her with another woman.
Fanfan's sister Manu (Marilyne Canto) provides refuge, but she's juggling two men on her own: her live-in lover Mytch (Michel Bompoil) and the comfortable, undemanding Jean (Laszlo Szabo). Mytch discovers the affair, and soon everyone's out on the street.
It's often fun to see the film break from convention and watch grown women behave like irresponsible adolescents rather than remaining the voices of mature sobriety while their men screw up. The women plot revenge and seek new, more satisfying entanglements, but they're also surprisingly content in their new lives of limbo.
As this comic minuet progresses, though, Le Roux and Falson seem to run out of ideas, adding several sequences of protracted filler. There's a lovely montage in which the three women spirit Joss' daughter away for a day, and the women dance and skip like enchantresses with their freshly snatched changeling. But the scene is out of step with the rest of the movie, seemingly from another film.
Le Roux also adds an irritatingly endless sequence of slapstick when the women have to hide from the wife of a man who's sheltering them. And a long costume ball finale lacks humor and surprise, not accomplishing much for the amount of time it takes.
THEY CALL IT SPRING
Agat Films et Cie
Credits:
Producer: Gilles Sandoz
Director: Herve Le Roux
Screenwriter: Renee Falson
Director of photography: Pierre Milon
Production designer: Patrick Durand
Music supervisor: Pierre Allio
Costume designer: Corinne le Flem
Editor: Nadine Tarbouriech. Cast: Paul: Pierre Berriau
Joss: Marie Matheron
Lise: Margaux Hocquard
Fanfan: Maryse Cupaiolo
Charles: Antoine Chappey
Manu: Marilyne Canto
Jean: Laszlo Szabo
Mytch: Michel Bompoil
Claude: Bernard Ballet
No MPAA rating
Color/stereo
Running time -- 103 minutes...
The movie, which had its U.S. debut at the San Francisco International Film Festival, has no domestic distributor as yet. Its novel take on the midlife crises of women could have boxoffice potential on the art house circuit. But Le Roux and screenwriter Renee Falson's eccentric bypathsultimately render the film directionless.
The film begins with three male singers costumed in frilly, 18th century court dress. Their waggish lyrics feature lines like "Be prepared to swoon/All noise leads to tune." The song ends with the performers barking, meowing and braying to the music. The men, it turns out, are contemporary Parisians, rehearsing a stage revue. (Their rehearsals crop up throughout the film, and the end credits roll over yet another song.)
Joss (Marie Matheron), wife to one of the vocalists (Pierre Berriau), is abandoning him for her female lover. On the way, she receives a call from her friend Fanfan (Maryse Cupaiolo), whose boyfriend (Antoine Choppey) is busy tossing her belongings out the window. After Fanfan rescues her property -- which includes a large catfish -- she and Joss flee to Joss' lover, only to discover her with another woman.
Fanfan's sister Manu (Marilyne Canto) provides refuge, but she's juggling two men on her own: her live-in lover Mytch (Michel Bompoil) and the comfortable, undemanding Jean (Laszlo Szabo). Mytch discovers the affair, and soon everyone's out on the street.
It's often fun to see the film break from convention and watch grown women behave like irresponsible adolescents rather than remaining the voices of mature sobriety while their men screw up. The women plot revenge and seek new, more satisfying entanglements, but they're also surprisingly content in their new lives of limbo.
As this comic minuet progresses, though, Le Roux and Falson seem to run out of ideas, adding several sequences of protracted filler. There's a lovely montage in which the three women spirit Joss' daughter away for a day, and the women dance and skip like enchantresses with their freshly snatched changeling. But the scene is out of step with the rest of the movie, seemingly from another film.
Le Roux also adds an irritatingly endless sequence of slapstick when the women have to hide from the wife of a man who's sheltering them. And a long costume ball finale lacks humor and surprise, not accomplishing much for the amount of time it takes.
THEY CALL IT SPRING
Agat Films et Cie
Credits:
Producer: Gilles Sandoz
Director: Herve Le Roux
Screenwriter: Renee Falson
Director of photography: Pierre Milon
Production designer: Patrick Durand
Music supervisor: Pierre Allio
Costume designer: Corinne le Flem
Editor: Nadine Tarbouriech. Cast: Paul: Pierre Berriau
Joss: Marie Matheron
Lise: Margaux Hocquard
Fanfan: Maryse Cupaiolo
Charles: Antoine Chappey
Manu: Marilyne Canto
Jean: Laszlo Szabo
Mytch: Michel Bompoil
Claude: Bernard Ballet
No MPAA rating
Color/stereo
Running time -- 103 minutes...
- 4/23/2001
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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