Films with: Huppert, Isabelle

8 femmes 8 women /

A wealthy industrialist is found murdered in his home while his family gathers for the holiday season. The house is isolated and the phone lines have been found to be cut. Eight women are his potential murderers. Each is a suspect and each has a motive. Only one is guilty.

DVD 2070

Abuse of weakness

The film is an exploration of power and sex. Maud is a strong-willed filmmaker who suffers a stroke. Bedridden but determined to pursue her latest film project, she sees Vilko, a con man who swindles celebrities, on a TV talk show. Interested in him for her new film, the two meet and Maud soon finds herself falling for Vilko's manipulative charm as their parasitic relationship hurtles out of control.

DVD 10740

Amateur

A crackpot ex-nun who writes pornographic short stories crosses paths with an amnesiac wandering the streets of New York City. When they set out to uncover his identity, they come face to face with his unsavory past--including a vengeful porno actress and ruthless corporate assassins hot on their trail.

DVD 3465

Amour Love/

A touching tale of a loving couple whose unbreakable bonds of marriage are tested by life's greatest challenge.

DVD 9729

Après l'amour Love after love /

Spanning a year in the life of Lola (Isabelle Huppert), a novelist famous for turning her life into fiction, we follow her loves and the loves of her loves. It is the story of how the 70's generation is dealing with the 90's and the contradiction, often comic, between what we expect of romance and need from love.

DVD 884

Avenir Things to come /

Nathalie is a philosophy teacher with a seemingly settled existence, juggling a rich life of the mind with the day-to-day demands of career and family. But beginning with the bombshell revelation that her husband of twenty-five years is leaving her, one by one the pillars of Nathalie's life start to crumble. For the first time in ages, she finds herself adrift, but also with a newfound sense of liberation. With nothing to hold her back, Nathalie sets out to rediscover herself.

DVD 12274

Cérémonie

Catherine hires the illiterate Sophie to work as her maid at her remote home in the French countryside. But Sophie soon falls under the influence of the mysterious Jeanne and suddenly the stage is set for murder, violence and betrayal.

DVD 3507

Claire's camera

A first time visitor to Cannes, schoolteacher Claire befriends Manhee and together, they explore Cannes, taking photos with Claire's camera, and along the way, learn more about their photos' subjects, about life--and about themselves.

DVD 12995

Comédie de l'innocence The comedy of innocence /

Shortly after his 9th birthday, Camille tells his mother Ariane that he is really Paul, and that he would like to return to his "real" mother, Isabella, who lives on the other side of town. Alarmed at first, but willing to humor him, she takes him to Isabella's and is startled to find out he knows her apartment intimately. It turns out that Isabella's son drowned two years earlier. Is Camille the reincarnation of Isabella's dead son?

DVD 4651

Coup de foudre

Set in Lyons in the 1950's, this is the story of Madeleine and Lena who are trapped in a rut of middle-class complacency. Their relationship deepens into a dependency that eventually bursts the confines of the provincial society around them.

DVD 756

Coup de torchon

After Lucien Cordier, the only police officer in a small African village is ridiculed by the local pimp, cheated on by his wife, and suffers his mistresses being beaten, he begins to get rid of the evil ones in his life.

DVD 1582

Dentellière The lacemaker /

A tragic love story about a shy beautician and a handsome but insensitive student.

DVD 10887

Destinées sentimentales Sentimental destinies /

A sweeping epic spanning three decades and a world war. The film follows the life and loves of Jean Barnery, a provincial gentleman and reluctant heir to his family's porcelain empire.

DVD 2393

Ecole de la chair

"Dominque is an accomplished fashion executive bored with her mundane life, until she meets Quentin, a much younger bisexual hustler/bartender. The pair enjoy a powerful chemistry despite their differences in age and background and enter into an arrangement where each gets what they desire most: Dominique, a bed partner, and Quentin, a home and financial security. But Quentin's mysterious air and vulnerable, yet violent nature force Dominique to look into his past."--Container.

DVD 676

Elle

Michèle seems indestructible. Head of a successful video game company, she brings the same ruthless attitude to her love life as to business. Being attacked in her home by an unknown assailant changes Michèle's life forever. When she resolutely tracks the man down, they are both drawn into a curious and thrilling game--a game that may, at any moment, spiral out of control.

DVD 12114

Gabrielle

Jean is a successful publisher. He has refined tastes and abundant material possessions, among which he seems to include his wife, Gabrielle. But in a single afternoon, Gabrielle decides to leave him for another man and then abruptly reverses her decision. Now, everything that Jean believed to be true about his life and marriage falls apart.

DVD 4965

Greta

A sweet, naive young woman trying to make it on her own in New York City, Frances doesn't think twice about returning the handbag she finds on the subway to its rightful owner. That owner is an eccentric French piano teacher with a love for classical music and an aching loneliness. Having recently lost her mother, Frances quickly grows closer to the widowed Greta. The two become fast friends, but the older woman's maternal charms begin to dissolve and grow increasingly disturbing as Frances discovers that nothing is what it seems.

DVD 13100

Heaven's gate

A lawman and a hitman are in love with the same woman. All three are caught up in a devastating class war, when ruthless ranchers decide to kill off the starving immigrants who have been stealing their cattle. The story is based on a real range war in the 1890s in Johnson County, Wyoming.

DVD 946

I [heart] Huckabees

Kindhearted, but confused activist Andrew Markovski hires a pair of eccentric 'existential detectives' to help him find the meaning of life. All the while, a sexy, French author is trying to throw a wrench in their plan by seducing Andrew's mind and body.

DVD 3708

Jean-Luc Godard

Passion: A Godard-like director is trying to film a movie in the style of the great painters--Rembrandt, Goya, El Greco. The film is plagued by difficulties as the money for the film begins to run out, he can't seem to find the right lighting and the film has no story. In the middle of this intense situation, he starts a simultaneous affair with two women. Hanna, the owner of the hotel, and Isabelle, a factory worker who is trying to stir up a revolt. First name: Carmen: Carmen, a member of a terrorist gang, seduces the hapless policeman Joseph, who tries to arrest her during a bank robbery. Fleeing together, they hide out with her eccentric uncle until the restless Carmen leads them to an absurd doom. The film is set in contemporary France. Detective: Set amidst the confines of a decaying Parisian hotel, plot is set in motion when a miserably married couple attempt to collect a debt from mob-plagued boxing manager, the mischievously named Jim Fox Warner. Meanwhile, a house detective tries to solve an old murder case. It is a take on modern morality and popular culture. Oh, woe is me: God may have entered the body of Simon to experience love and desire with Simon's wife Rachel; based in part on the Greek legend of Amphitryon. The film is set in a small Swiss town on Lake Geneva.

DVD 5424

Madame Bovary

Bored with her confined life in 19th century France, a woman runs up ruinous debts and has adulterous affairs. When her excessive life catches up with her, she resorts to suicide as her final means of escape.

DVD 6164

Merci pour le chocolat

Huppert plays Mika, wife of celebrated pianist André Polonski (Jacques Dutronc) and stepmother to his son, Guillaume, whose mother died in a carwreck on his sixth birthday. Their lives are interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Jeanne (Anna Mouglalis), a young woman who has learned that she was almost switched at birth with Guillaume. Also a pianist, she harbours a suspicion that she may be André's daughter.

DVD 6978

Nue propriété Private property /

Pascale lives with her adult twin sons in a renovated Belgian farmhouse. Each is still reeling from the divorce that divided the family some years earlier. Both boys pursue their respective interests, but neither seems compelled to embrace adulthood or the responsibilities that come with it. Pascale falls in love again and dreams of a new life for herself and her lover. Her dream is to own a countryside B&B. But what would seemingly be a happy time in her life takes a turn for the worse as she finds herself unabel to rise from the shadow of her ex-husband and selfish children. In a bid for survival, Pascale leaves the house in the hands of her sons, never suspencting that in her absence, long-buried resentment and rivalry will boil over, igniting a war between the brothers.

DVD 5135

Pianiste

"In this riveting study of the dynamics of control, Academy Award-winning director Michael Haneke takes on Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek's controversial 1983 novel about perverse female sexuality and the world of classical music ... Erika [is] a piano professor at a Viennese conservatory who lives with her mother in a claustrophobically codependent relationship. Severely repressed, she satisfies her masochistic urges only voyeuristically until she meets Walter, a student whose desire for Erika leads to a destructive infatuation that upsets the careful equilibrium of her life."--Container.

DVD 3018

Religieuse the nun /

In 1760s France, Suzanne is a beautiful young girl with a natural talent for music, enjoying a quietly privileged life. Inexplicably sent off to a convent, she resists structure at every turn until she discovers that she is an illegitimate child. Left with no other option, she pronounces her vows and suffers the consequences of her mother's sin. Still uncertain of her path and oppressed by aggressive and inappropriate Mother Superiors, Suzanne continues to resist imposed religious values.

DVD 11347

Sans queue ni tête Special treatment /

Alice is a high-class prostitute who serves up sexual fantasies for her clientele, from school girl innocence to S&M. Fed up with the seamy underbelly of French masculinity she crosses paths with Xavier, a neurotic psychoanalyst facing a marriage crisis. The two quickly realize their professions share a thing or two in common as they navigate the overlapping worlds of psychotherapy and sex therapy. Special features: director Q&A and filmmaker bio.

DVD 8619

Séparation The separation /

Anne tells her husband, Pierre, that she is in love with another man. He seems to accept this as a fact of life and refrains from asking the most burning questions. However, as Anne continues to see the "other man", Pierre becomes more violent and it begins to dawn on them that something intangible has happened which cannot be put right.

DVD 734

Tip top

When an Algerian informant for the French police is found murdered in a small town, two female investigators suspect the possibility of police involvement with the murder.

DVD 11351

Truite The trout /

"Frederique is a free-spirited and impish woman who has made an art of using her sexuality to get precisely what she wants from men. On a whim, Frederique leaves her disinterested husband and the family trout farm to travel to Japan with a wealthy businessman. Her enchantment soon gives way to reflection, navigation of the swiftly-changing sexual freedoms and responsibilities of a new era, and the quest for satori, the "world of ecstasy" experienced by her friend. But has Frederique grown up too fast, or not fast enough?"--Container.

DVD 4507

Violette Nozier

"The daughter of a respectable middle-class couple, Violette Nozière leads a disreputable double life. Far from being the innocent young girl her parents mistake her for, she spends her nights with dissolute young men in the Latin Quarter of Paris. To acquire money for her latest lover, Violette resolves to commit and unthinkable crime."--Container.

DVD 6236

White material

Maria is an entitled white woman living in Africa, desperately unwilling to give up her family's crumbling coffee plantation despite the civil war closing in on her. A gripping evocation of the death throes of European colonialism and a fascinating look at a woman lost in her own mind.

DVD 8047