Aline Issermann's "Shades of Doubt" ("L'Ombre du Doute"), a French film about a wrenching family crisis, is set forth with remarkable restraint. The subject is incest, but the story's potential for tawdriness is never exploited. Instead, Ms. Issermann presents a discreet, methodical account of how 12-year-old Alexandrine comes to bring and then recant charges against her father, Jean.
In the debacle of the battle of Vitoria in Spain in 1813, Pierre Cursey was robbed of the horses of his unit by a fugitive. He is taken prisoner and sent to a floating pontoon. He managed to survive but vowed to find the traitor who had put him through hell. He finds him two years later in a village in the Dordogne. Francois Lemercier is the town's shoemaker and above all the captain and hero of the local soule team, a ball game that dates back to the Middle Ages. Cursey will discover in Lemercier a man of chivalrous honor.
The life of Camille Claudel, a French sculptor who becomes the apprentice of Auguste Rodin and later his lover. Her passion for her art and Rodin drive her further away from reason and rationality.
France is a haughty, bourgeoise wife who is abandoned at the side of the road by her husband after a vicious quarrel. She meets Charles, a doctor. The meeting of the two strangers is the focus of the film, along with their encounters with characters at a truck stop.
It was during one of his missions in Norway that Antoine learned of his wife's death. He leaves his experimental submarine and returns to Paris. Helene was found in the Seine and had taken barbiturates. Even though he had not been with Hélène for six years, he knew her well enough to believe that she was incapable of committing suicide. So who and why?
In a desolate Paris suburb, no one dares challenge crime boss Hagen, who rules his turf with an iron fist. That includes his former friend Chet, who vows to keep to himself in order to protect his loved ones. But Hagen keeps pushing his buttons… and Chet can only stand for so much before he explodes.
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.
Three men with a penchant for gambling on the horses soon find themselves in trouble because of their addiction. Pierre (Michel Piccoli) is the math whiz who uses his talent for picking the winners. Charles (Michel Galabru) is the wealthy scrap-iron magnate who has embarrassing evidence on many prominent political figures. Loic (Jacques Dutronc) is the aspiring politico who seeks to further his career by any means possible. Charles approaches Loic and asks his political party for a loan in hopes of fixing an upcoming race....
Aboard a giant slave ship in an abandoned Citroën factory, the history of the West Indies is traced through several centuries of French oppression. The ship becomes a stage for the people to tell stories via song and dance—from their enslavement to their displacement in Metropolitan France.
After his family tries to kill him and he has been pronounced dead, Michel returns from the dead and sets about getting revenge on his family members. He sends each one a voodoo doll, warning of their fate. Wandering over the streets of Paris, Michel is the haunted and hunted, as he himself hunts his villainous kin.
France, 1893. Joseph Bouvier attempts to shoot his love who refused to marry him and to commit suicide. Upon release from the filthy asylum where he was placed, with bullets still remaining in his head, he wanders the country roads and rapes and murders many teenagers over years. The judge Rousseau captures him, but to serve his ambition seeks to avoid that Bouvier is simply declared insane.
A bus conductor gets dressed for work in the morning, goes to the toilet, where he is killed by a bomb. The Commissioner and his fat, bumbling assistant, Inspector Charbonnier are put on the case. After interviewing friends, wives, colleagues, and spying on strangers who might be connected, our heroes trace the assassin down to a mental institution where, it seems, the murder victim has been an inmate for the last three years...
This is rural France. It's the summer of 1943, the weather is fine and sunny and life is sweet. On one of these beautiful days, Nanette, a fourteen-year-old peasant girl, meets a slightly injured young man near the farm she lives on. Her life is about to change forever.
This French farce/drama takes place in Ireland in 1916, during one of the peak periods of revolutionary violence. Seven Irish revolutionaries have taken over a post office, totally evacuating the building. Or so they think. They missed Gertie Gertel, who was in the bathroom at the time. By the time she is discovered, they are sufficiently besieged that for her own safety, she must stay with them. Gertie, it turns out, is about as pro-British as it is possible to be, and the seven take it on themselves, in the midst of battles and gunfights, to win her over to their cause.
Journalist Claude Leroy (Jacques Champreux) reports that a secret society, The Companions of Baal, is behind a hold-up in the small town of Blaingirey. They are led by the Grand Maître Hubert de Mauvouloir (Jean Martin). An adorant of Lucifer, he aims to enslave the world. Accompanied by their acolyte, Pierrot Robichat (Gérard Zimmermann), and a young girl, Françoise Cordier (Claire Nadeau), Claude Leroy is determined to finally reveal the mysteries of the group's criminal enterprise.