Paris -- William Hurt and Isabella Rossellini have teamed up to star in French director Julie Gavras' sexagenarian romantic comedy "Late Bloomers," the film's co-producer, Gallic distributor and international sales agent Gaumont said Friday.
Written by Gavras and Olivier Dazat, "Late Bloomers" is produced by Sylvie Pialat for Les Films du Worso and Bertrand Faivre in a co-production with Gaumont, The Bureau's Tristan Goligher and Be-Films' Christophe Louis in Belgium.
Hurt and Rossellini play an aging couple who react to their senior status in different ways. The film also co-stars U.K talents Doreen Mantle, Kate Ashfield, Joanna Jumley and Simon Callow.
The film shoots on location starting March 19 in and around London for six weeks through late April. Gaumont will handle distribution in France plus international sales.
Written by Gavras and Olivier Dazat, "Late Bloomers" is produced by Sylvie Pialat for Les Films du Worso and Bertrand Faivre in a co-production with Gaumont, The Bureau's Tristan Goligher and Be-Films' Christophe Louis in Belgium.
Hurt and Rossellini play an aging couple who react to their senior status in different ways. The film also co-stars U.K talents Doreen Mantle, Kate Ashfield, Joanna Jumley and Simon Callow.
The film shoots on location starting March 19 in and around London for six weeks through late April. Gaumont will handle distribution in France plus international sales.
- 3/19/2010
- by By Rebecca Leffler
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
PARIS -- The cast list is one to die for. The makers of Asterix at the Olympic Games, the third in the franchise featuring Gaul's favorite comic book hero, have lined up Alain Delon, Gerard Depardieu, Clovis Cornillac, Jose Garcia, Benoit Poelvoorde and Jean-Pierre Cassel, and that's only the actors.
Famous names from other fields who bolster the project include Michael Schumacher and Jean Todt (motor racing), Zinedine Zidane (soccer), Tony Parker (basketball) and Adriana Karembeu (fashion). Trailed on YouTube months in advance, backed with a massive publicity budget, opening simultaneously on 5,000 screens throughout Europe -- including more than 1,000 in France, the movie, boasting a record budget upward of $100 million, appears certain to pack them in. Nevertheless, the question must be asked: Is it any good?
Perhaps the fairest that can be said is that it's a curate's egg of a movie -- good in parts. While Asterix III is unlikely to win the praise of critics as its predecessor, "Asterix & Obelix Meet Cleopatra," did five years ago, it provides plenty of gags and visual trickery to please children, adolescents and celebrity-spotters and contains at least one noteworthy performance.
When the young Gallic swain Alafolix (Stephane Rousseau) plights his troth to the beautiful Greek princess Irina (Vanessa Hessler), he finds himself in competition with Brutus (Poelvoorde), the ambitious son of Julius Caesar (Delon), to whom she has been promised by her father. To settle the dispute, though she loves Alafolix, Irina says she will give her hand to whichever of the two wins the sports tournament about to take place on Mount Olympus. Asterix (Cornillac) and Obelix (Depardieu) lead a Gallic delegation to compete against teams from Rome, Greece, Egypt, Spain and other parts of the then-known world. Meanwhile, in a parallel strand, the buffoonish Brutus is scheming to get rid of his father by any possible means, including poison, in order to succeed him.
If the plot lacks subtlety, so do the gags, not to say that none of them are funny. The humor is hit-and-miss, with plenty of misses, and the jokey references to modern French pop songs will pass over the heads of foreign audiences.
What first-time director Thomas Langmann and his co-director Frederic Forestier succeed best in providing is a sense of spectacle. They make abundant and effective use of SFX and computer-generated imagery to produce an array of cartoonish effects, culminating in a chariot race that owes nothing to Ben-Hur. The movie lacks pace -- 15 minutes could have been trimmed -- and that it nonetheless hangs together is mainly because of the efforts of Poelvoorde, the one actor who has a genuine comic talent. He plays Brutus as a cross between Caligula and Jerry Lewis and is the best reason for seeing the movie, apart from taking the kids.
ASTERIX AT THE OLYMPIC GAMES
Pathe Distribution (France)
Pathe Renn production, La Petite Reine, TF1 Films production, Tri Pictures, Sorolla Films, Constantin Film, Novo RPI
Credits:
Directors: Frederic Forestier, Thomas Langmann
Screenwriters: Alexandre Charlot, Franck Magnier, Olivier Dazat, Thomas Langmann
Based on the comic book by: Rene Goscinny, Albert Uderzo
Producers: Jean-Lou Monthieux, Pierre Grunstein
Director of photography: Thierry Arbogast
Editor: Yannick Kergoat
Production designer: Aline Bonetto
Costume designer: Madeline Fontaine
Music: Frederic Talgorn
Cast:
Asterix: Clovis Cornillac
Obelix: Gerard Depardieu
Brutus: Benoit Poelvoorde
Julius Caesar: Alain Delon
Alafolix: Stephane Rousseau
Princess Irina: Vanessa Hessler
Couverdepus: Jose Garcia
Assurancetourix: Franck Dubosc
Panoramix: Jean-Pierre Cassel
Alpha: Luca Bizzarri
Omega: Elie Semoun
Humungus: Nathan Jones
Running time -- 117 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Famous names from other fields who bolster the project include Michael Schumacher and Jean Todt (motor racing), Zinedine Zidane (soccer), Tony Parker (basketball) and Adriana Karembeu (fashion). Trailed on YouTube months in advance, backed with a massive publicity budget, opening simultaneously on 5,000 screens throughout Europe -- including more than 1,000 in France, the movie, boasting a record budget upward of $100 million, appears certain to pack them in. Nevertheless, the question must be asked: Is it any good?
Perhaps the fairest that can be said is that it's a curate's egg of a movie -- good in parts. While Asterix III is unlikely to win the praise of critics as its predecessor, "Asterix & Obelix Meet Cleopatra," did five years ago, it provides plenty of gags and visual trickery to please children, adolescents and celebrity-spotters and contains at least one noteworthy performance.
When the young Gallic swain Alafolix (Stephane Rousseau) plights his troth to the beautiful Greek princess Irina (Vanessa Hessler), he finds himself in competition with Brutus (Poelvoorde), the ambitious son of Julius Caesar (Delon), to whom she has been promised by her father. To settle the dispute, though she loves Alafolix, Irina says she will give her hand to whichever of the two wins the sports tournament about to take place on Mount Olympus. Asterix (Cornillac) and Obelix (Depardieu) lead a Gallic delegation to compete against teams from Rome, Greece, Egypt, Spain and other parts of the then-known world. Meanwhile, in a parallel strand, the buffoonish Brutus is scheming to get rid of his father by any possible means, including poison, in order to succeed him.
If the plot lacks subtlety, so do the gags, not to say that none of them are funny. The humor is hit-and-miss, with plenty of misses, and the jokey references to modern French pop songs will pass over the heads of foreign audiences.
What first-time director Thomas Langmann and his co-director Frederic Forestier succeed best in providing is a sense of spectacle. They make abundant and effective use of SFX and computer-generated imagery to produce an array of cartoonish effects, culminating in a chariot race that owes nothing to Ben-Hur. The movie lacks pace -- 15 minutes could have been trimmed -- and that it nonetheless hangs together is mainly because of the efforts of Poelvoorde, the one actor who has a genuine comic talent. He plays Brutus as a cross between Caligula and Jerry Lewis and is the best reason for seeing the movie, apart from taking the kids.
ASTERIX AT THE OLYMPIC GAMES
Pathe Distribution (France)
Pathe Renn production, La Petite Reine, TF1 Films production, Tri Pictures, Sorolla Films, Constantin Film, Novo RPI
Credits:
Directors: Frederic Forestier, Thomas Langmann
Screenwriters: Alexandre Charlot, Franck Magnier, Olivier Dazat, Thomas Langmann
Based on the comic book by: Rene Goscinny, Albert Uderzo
Producers: Jean-Lou Monthieux, Pierre Grunstein
Director of photography: Thierry Arbogast
Editor: Yannick Kergoat
Production designer: Aline Bonetto
Costume designer: Madeline Fontaine
Music: Frederic Talgorn
Cast:
Asterix: Clovis Cornillac
Obelix: Gerard Depardieu
Brutus: Benoit Poelvoorde
Julius Caesar: Alain Delon
Alafolix: Stephane Rousseau
Princess Irina: Vanessa Hessler
Couverdepus: Jose Garcia
Assurancetourix: Franck Dubosc
Panoramix: Jean-Pierre Cassel
Alpha: Luca Bizzarri
Omega: Elie Semoun
Humungus: Nathan Jones
Running time -- 117 minutes
No MPAA rating...
TORONTO -- Director Patrice Leconte has declared he no longer wants to do "overly serious movies" and that after three more films he will discontinue making films altogether. My Best Friend is the discouraging result of these twin decisions to downshift. One looks to Leconte for some of the finest, most sophisticated and compassionate filmmaking coming out of France, not for a situation comedy.
My Best Friend is not a bad film and veteran star Daniel Auteuil makes any film he inhabits an interesting place to visit. Perversely, its tissue-thin substance may even make the comedy more commercial in North America than such films of his as Monsieur Hire and Ridicule.
However, there is within the premise of My Best Friend a much better film than Leconte and his co-writer Jerome Tonnerre (working from Olivier Dazat's story) came up with. The situation is this: A busy antiques dealer, Francois (Auteuil), is so lost in his work that he is shocked to realize he has absolutely no friends. At a birthday dinner with acquaintances, everyone makes it clear none of them likes him.
Chagrined, Francois insists he has a best friend. When challenged by his associate, Catherine (Julie Gayet), he is forced to make a wager -- over a super-expensive Greek vase he just purchased at auction -- that he can produce a best friend within 10 days.
So all Francois has to do is learn how to make friends and, crucially, to make a "best friend." His solution is immediately apparent to any viewer but not, at least initially, to Francois. Early in the movie, he keeps running into a gregarious cabbie named Bruno (Dany Boon), a talkative man with a mania for trivia that makes everyone around him slightly nuts. Eventually, Francois does notice how easily Bruno makes friends with strangers so he enlists Bruno to teach him the social graces.
Meanwhile, the search for a best friend goes badly as everyone from a fellow dealer to a long-ago school chum turns out to loathe him. Of course, quicker than you can say "predictable," you notice that Bruno would make a wonderful best buddy.
What bothers you is how Leconte has shied away from his own theme. The film supplies plenty of bumper-sticker sentiments about friendship but never gets to the bottom of what that word really means. Friendship has nothing to do with social graces or even being a good guy; it is a connection that doesn't yield easily to sit-com solutions.
In no way is Francois a worst-case scenario. Catherine is clearly a friend, for instance. Yes, he is distant and self-absorbed -- as if those were unique qualities -- but you don't see him as reprehensible. It might have been intriguing to watch a truly horrible person forced to give himself over to friendliness. Scrooge in A Christmas Carol is a good model.
Francois has a born-yesterday naivete that doesn't square with his obvious sophistication. Could such a fellow really navigate in the Parisian art and social world so cluelessly? And if he were a thief and a bastard -- which you never really see -- wouldn't he be as thick as thieves with someone?
Meanwhile, Bruno's character is designed more as a solution to another character's problem than as a flesh-and-blood personality. What is interesting though is that for all his friendliness, he is a much lonelier guy than Francois ever is.
Things come to a head toward the end, charmingly and cleverly, on the French version of the TV game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" This is the show, remember, where if a know-it-all contestant such as Bruno gets stuck, he can call "a friend."
Technical credits are fine although, by Leconte standards, run-of-the-mill when it comes to visual style.
MY BEST FRIEND
Christal Films presents a Fidelite Films, TF1 Films and Lucky Red co-production
Credits:
Director: Patrice Leconte
Writers: Jerome Tonnerre, Patrice Leconte
Story by: Olivier Dazat
Producers: Olivier Delbosc, Marc Missonnier
Director of photography: Jean-Marie Dreujou
Production designer: Ivan Maussion
Costumes: Annie Perier Bertaux
Music: Xavier Demerliac
Editor: Joelle Hache.
Cast:
Francois: Daniel Auteuil
Bruno: Dany Boon
Catherine: Julie Gayet
Louise: Julie Durand
Bruno's father: Jacques Mathou
Bruno's mother: Marie Pillet
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 95 minutes...
My Best Friend is not a bad film and veteran star Daniel Auteuil makes any film he inhabits an interesting place to visit. Perversely, its tissue-thin substance may even make the comedy more commercial in North America than such films of his as Monsieur Hire and Ridicule.
However, there is within the premise of My Best Friend a much better film than Leconte and his co-writer Jerome Tonnerre (working from Olivier Dazat's story) came up with. The situation is this: A busy antiques dealer, Francois (Auteuil), is so lost in his work that he is shocked to realize he has absolutely no friends. At a birthday dinner with acquaintances, everyone makes it clear none of them likes him.
Chagrined, Francois insists he has a best friend. When challenged by his associate, Catherine (Julie Gayet), he is forced to make a wager -- over a super-expensive Greek vase he just purchased at auction -- that he can produce a best friend within 10 days.
So all Francois has to do is learn how to make friends and, crucially, to make a "best friend." His solution is immediately apparent to any viewer but not, at least initially, to Francois. Early in the movie, he keeps running into a gregarious cabbie named Bruno (Dany Boon), a talkative man with a mania for trivia that makes everyone around him slightly nuts. Eventually, Francois does notice how easily Bruno makes friends with strangers so he enlists Bruno to teach him the social graces.
Meanwhile, the search for a best friend goes badly as everyone from a fellow dealer to a long-ago school chum turns out to loathe him. Of course, quicker than you can say "predictable," you notice that Bruno would make a wonderful best buddy.
What bothers you is how Leconte has shied away from his own theme. The film supplies plenty of bumper-sticker sentiments about friendship but never gets to the bottom of what that word really means. Friendship has nothing to do with social graces or even being a good guy; it is a connection that doesn't yield easily to sit-com solutions.
In no way is Francois a worst-case scenario. Catherine is clearly a friend, for instance. Yes, he is distant and self-absorbed -- as if those were unique qualities -- but you don't see him as reprehensible. It might have been intriguing to watch a truly horrible person forced to give himself over to friendliness. Scrooge in A Christmas Carol is a good model.
Francois has a born-yesterday naivete that doesn't square with his obvious sophistication. Could such a fellow really navigate in the Parisian art and social world so cluelessly? And if he were a thief and a bastard -- which you never really see -- wouldn't he be as thick as thieves with someone?
Meanwhile, Bruno's character is designed more as a solution to another character's problem than as a flesh-and-blood personality. What is interesting though is that for all his friendliness, he is a much lonelier guy than Francois ever is.
Things come to a head toward the end, charmingly and cleverly, on the French version of the TV game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" This is the show, remember, where if a know-it-all contestant such as Bruno gets stuck, he can call "a friend."
Technical credits are fine although, by Leconte standards, run-of-the-mill when it comes to visual style.
MY BEST FRIEND
Christal Films presents a Fidelite Films, TF1 Films and Lucky Red co-production
Credits:
Director: Patrice Leconte
Writers: Jerome Tonnerre, Patrice Leconte
Story by: Olivier Dazat
Producers: Olivier Delbosc, Marc Missonnier
Director of photography: Jean-Marie Dreujou
Production designer: Ivan Maussion
Costumes: Annie Perier Bertaux
Music: Xavier Demerliac
Editor: Joelle Hache.
Cast:
Francois: Daniel Auteuil
Bruno: Dany Boon
Catherine: Julie Gayet
Louise: Julie Durand
Bruno's father: Jacques Mathou
Bruno's mother: Marie Pillet
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 95 minutes...
- 9/15/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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