Change Your Image
ericpecher
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Le missionnaire (2009)
Not as bad as one might expect
Jean-Marie Bigard is well known in France for his crude sexual jokes. I was rather surprised while watching this movie to see how 'contended' he might be for his part - much more subtle than I expected.
The duo Doudi-Bigard worked quiet well for 3/4 of the movie and I enjoyed many of the characters part. The movie suddenly seemed to go a different way in the last quarter, trying to deliver some kind of moralistic message that didn't convince me too much.
Story pitch (may content minor spoilers) : Mario (J-M Bigard) is just released from jail after a 7 years detention for jewels robbery. Some of his 'old friends' are waiting for him at the prison entrance because he is the only one to know the location of very precious jewels from a previous robbery. After a few intimidations, Mario is going to his brother Patrick (Doudi Strajmayster) - a priest - to find a place to hide from his dangerous friends. Patrick's only idea is to disguise Mario as a priest and send him in a very isolated village in Ardeche as a priest student. But once Mario arrives in the village of Banne, the crowd there is awaiting for him to bury the just passed-away former local priest - and take his place ! In the meantime, Mario asks his brother Patrick to retrieve the jewels and sell them to a local mafia boss. The more the story evolves, the more the two characters take the position of one another with unexpected consequences !
I gave it a 6/10 because of the good performance of the actors even if the story is sometimes a bit predictable and annoying - some good parts are irresistible to laugh at. A good average french comedy.
Les fragments d'Antonin (2006)
Discovering Le Bomin/Confirming Derangère
I saw this last night at the EuroCine 27 event; 27 movies from each European countries shown the same day in several European cities. I never heard of Le Bomin and barely heard of Derangère ("La Chambre des Officiers") and was fortunately surprised to discover these two great talents yet unknown from the large audience ! Derangère is absolutely astonishing playing the character Antonin Verset which is victim of post-WWI trauma, always living the same troubling scenes he endured the last six months of the War.
All cast is excellent and also a great work on cinematography offers some really nice shots, great landscapes and stunning faces. The editing is really well done with subtile bits of memories here and there that make sense more and more in the story. Also, the first minutes of the movie are showing real chilling WW-I archives.
This is not another action-flick; if you like sensitive and more psychologic movies that will really give you something to think about, then I absolutely recommend "Les Fragments d'Antonin" !
Let's see what Le Bomin will do next...