Tonie Marshall

Inspired even as a boy by the Folies Bergere, the legendary Paris cabaret venue, couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier always wanted to stage a show there. "But what story can I tell?" he muses in this doc about the six months of preparation that went into the show. "Mine." Combining fashion with film, dance, theater, and unapologetic over-the-top-ness, the revue offers a 40-year career retrospective of the designer who is practically never spoken of without using the phrase enfant terrible. Notorious among cinephiles for his costumes for The Fifth Element and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover and among pop fans for Madonna's pointy cone brassiere, he also incorporated teddy bears and S&M fetish gear as design motifs. In the show, the fanciful and outrageous meets the naughtily witty (a skit sending up Vogue dragon lady Anna Wintour) and the poignant (a tribute to his partner Francis Menuge, who died in 1990).

The story centers around a graduating class of "less-gifted" students in a private Versailles high school. Only a miracle has brought the students this far along, and after a practical joke misfires and the whole school is dynamited, the students are in deep trouble. They have to present themselves in court for their punishment and it could not be worse: If they don't pass their high-school graduation exams, they go to prison!

Michel and Juliette have just broken up over Michel's affair with the much younger Romance. Alice and Nicolas are still together, but maybe this is because Nicolas does not know of Alice's affair with handsome sports photographer Gaspard. This sly sex comedy, the sophomore effort of Belgian filmmaker Lucas Belvaux, follows the covert sexual misadventures of the troubled foursome.

Marco Mazzetti, a driving instructor, lives with his wife Irène and their young son. After a series of nauseous dizzy spells he goes to the doctor and discovers that he is four-months pregnant. Marco then becomes internationally famous.

"Resumption of a play created in 1983. Two shipwrecked people on a makeshift raft in the middle of a social conflict, a mountaineering fight on Mount Paterhorn, improbable friction between two men and a woman in the Yvelines ... The places, the situations change, but each time there is a confrontation. The question is not so much who will win, but to take pleasure in the arguments provided by the opponents. Cunning, bad faith, all blows are allowed in what is primarily a fight of words. "

Nine short films about love.

Un conservateur terrorisé par les plantes vertes, une mère plastifiée pour être exposée, un ballet de Saintes Vierges, des gardiens épuisés par Rodin, un ministre perdu dans une exposition de sexes, une voiture disparue au parking Rembrandt, des provinciaux amoureux des Impressionnistes, touristes galopins galopant d'une salle à l'autre, passager clandestin dans l'art premier, Picasso, Gauguin, Warhol, ils sont tous là dans ce petit monde qui ressemble au grand, dans ce musée pas si imaginaire que ça, valsant la comédie humaine jusqu'au burlesque.

Georges,a trucker, is the single father of young Frédéric. His job prevents him from seeing his son as often as he could, as often as he should. Brought up by his grandparents, Frédéric proves a difficult child. His only friend is his twelve-year-old neighbor Rose. One day, Georges tells his son how Agnès, his mother, abandoned him at birth. Upset by such a revelation, Frédéric decides to be revenged...

A "three people relationship" with a pact involving a terrible past. The pact concerns France, Anne and Pierre.

Viviane would like Eric to put a ring on her finger. The latter inexorably refuses. Norbert, his best friend and upstairs neighbor, has just married Rose, but seems to regret it. The eternal debate on marriage leads to a war of the sexes.

A handful of student revolutionaries from the Seventies meet up 30 years later to plan a robbery. This is not entirely correct, because they are friends, anyway, and always have been. They play cards together and go to each others’ birthday parties, have wives and children and probably mortgages. Romain Goupil’s film appears to be a throwback to the experimental days of cinema verite. Either that or it’s a home movie, shot with a video camera, to an improvised script or no script at all.

In Montmartre, Paris, two friends are leading a happy carefree Bohemian existence. Jean-Luc is a cabinetmaker, Mathieu is a sculptor. Then they both meet the love of their lives and decide to get married. Unfortunately, the objects of their desire are not so eager to be drawn into matrimony.

The producers of this French film took approximately 100 people, put them on a soundstage and had them improvise this film based on the premise that they are on a spaceship escaping from the dictators of earth and only have a few days to live. Improvisation is a dangerous art-form; unprepared amateurs invariably come up with gross caricatures when challenged to improvise. The actors' choices in this film include an allegorical pageant of the life of Jesus, a marriage, an orgy, and some genuinely affectionate moments. Nonetheless, as an experimental effort in large-group improvisation, the film is instructive. - Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this romantic farce, former opera-singer and current music festival organizer Hermance (Judith Magre) is married to Charles-Henry (Jean Roquel). However, she still has a passion for her former lover Simon (Carlo Brandt), but he has a thing for Francoise (Sabine Haudepin). Meanwhile, Nathalie (Tonie Marshall) keeps trying to put the moves on Hippolyte (Jacques Bonnafe), who is either unaware of or is ignoring her efforts, while her lackluster former lover Christian (Michel Gauthier) looks on and stays out of the whole mess. Who comes out the worst in this deal? Naturally enough, it's Christian, the fellow who has, for good or ill, kept the most distance from it, when Hermance, who seems jealous of everyone, tries to get even with Simon for running off with Francoise. Don't worry, it's supposed to be confusing.

Rien ne va plus is a series of comedy sketches of disparate quality, on the social, cultural, and political foibles that make the French, French. Various settings and character types are given a once-over, including pseudo-intellectuals, punk bikers, right-wingers, and patrons of a low-end cafe.

Sébastien Fischer, a celebrated pianist, takes the advice of his agent and friend Gorgio and decides to take a break and spend some time in a little village in Provence, at the house of Avril Espart.

After the death of one of his clients, a Swiss industrialist decides to call his brother to transport the corpse to Switzerland. The journey will not be easy.

How couples unite, interact, separate, reunite or find other partners. The links in this chain begin with Christian and Nathalie, who are coworkers and friends. Christian discovers that his lover Francoise is having an affair, and Nathalie advises him to give his feelings some time to heal, about two years. Nathalie is angry that her lover Mark does not want to see her more often, while he is jealous of the men in her past. Meanwhile, Francoise finds out that her new lover is not that interested in her anymore, and after they split, she encounters him with someone else. As romance fluctuates like the lunar tides, the myth of one true love takes a beating.

On the occasion of Jean Paul Gaultier's 40-year career and his show "Fashion Freak Show" at the Folies Bergère, France 2 has given carte blanche to the most famous French couturier of the world who has created for the first time a great show of varieties fully immersed in his universe. Jean Paul Gaultier who, in his childhood, dreamed while watching the variety shows of Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier, takes the reins of this great entertainment mixing music and fashion.

A miraculous mushroom is discovered by a film director's daughter. It would be used to cure an actress.

This slice-of-life drama about an elderly couple and their estranged son covers twenty-four fateful hours that begin with the usual daily routine for the retired pair of former teachers (Micheline Presle and Claude Pieplu). Then their son telephones to say he will be coming over with his girlfriend and the normal pattern is changed, as he visits them rarely. While the mother is obsequious to her son when he arrives, past hurts and resentments bubble up during lunch, making it difficult for the son to tell them he is getting married. This is news enough, but the effect that announcement has on the son and his fiancée is unexpected and events later on in the day take a turn for the worse.