35 Movies Starring Michel Piccoli

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Celestine, the chambermaid, has new job on the country. The Monteils, who she works for are a group of strange people. The wife is frigid, her husband is always hunting (both animals and women) and her father is a shoe-fetishist. Joseph, the farm-labourer is a fascist and sexually attracted to Celestine. Celestine settles herself and talks to the neighbour, an ex-officer, who likes damaging his neighbour's things. After the death of the old man, she quits her job, but because of the rape and murder of a child 'Little Claire' she decides to stay, believing that Joseph is the murderer. To get his confession she sleeps with him and promises to marry him. In spite of her engagement she fakes evidence to implicate him in the murder. He is arrested, but is released because the evidence is inconclusive. She marries the ex-officer and takes on a housewife role similar to that of Madame Monteil

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Sei persone viaggiano in un vagone-letto da Marsiglia a Parigi. All'arrivo, un donna viene trovata morta nella sua cuccetta. La polizia si mette alla ricerca delle altre persone, sospettando possa essere stato uno degli altri cinque passeggeri a commettere l'omicidio, ma questi sono uccisi uno ad uno. Gli ultimi due (una coppia di ragazzi conosciutisi per caso nella carrozza) decidono di cercare di risolvere il caso, per non essere uccisi a loro volta, rischiando comunque di esserlo. Con il loro aiuto il caso viene risolto: un giovane e squattrinato studente, amante di una ricca ed attempata attrice (una delle vittime) ha organizzato gli omicidi con il suo amante, un giovane poliziotto nevrotico, per derubare la donna e fuggire insieme in Africa; per cui bisognava uccidere tutti i componenti del vagone-letto per non destare sospetti. Alla fine, dopo un inseguimento notturno per le vie di Parigi, lo studente viene arrestato ed il complice si suicida per non essere catturato.

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Renee Saccard is a pampered, selfish young wife of a middle-aged Parisian businessman who falls in love with her stepson but is driven to the point of madness when her husband tricks the stepson into betraying her.

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Severine is a beautiful young woman married to a doctor. She loves her husband dearly, but cannot bring herself to be physically intimate with him. She indulges instead in vivid, kinky, erotic fantasies to entertain her sexual desires. Eventually she becomes a prostitute, working in a brothel in the afternoons while remaining chaste in her marriage.

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Back home, Glauco, an industrial designer, finds his wife in bed with a serious headache. She has left him dinner but it is cold and Glauco decides to prepare himself a gourmet meal. While looking for some kitchenware, he discovers a revolver wrapped in a newspaper dating from 1934 announcing the death of famed mobster John Dillinger.

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Pierre, a successful engineer in building highways has a traffic accident. Being seriously wounded, he is lying waiting for death and remembering his past in flashbacks.

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A young man from north Italy named Amedeo decides to come to Rome.He has a crazy idea in his head to meet the pope.

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Sadiel, rebel leader in a North African state, takes refuge in Switzerland in the aftermath of a coup. Aware of the threat posed by Sadiel, the ruthless Colonel Kassar contacts the French security services to help in capturing the political activist. A police informer, Darien, is forced to lure Sadiel to Paris, allegedly to make a television coverage about the Third World. Arriving in Paris, Sadiel is captured and delivered to his opponents. Disgusted by the way he has been manipulated, Darien tries to turn back the clock, unknowing who's dealing with.

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Four successful middle-aged men Marcello, a pilot; Michel, a television executive; Ugo, a chef; and, Philippe, a judge go to Philippe's villa to eat themselves to death. After the first night, Marcello insists that women should join them. Three prostitutes make it through a day or two; Andrea, a local school teacher, stays to the end. The villa, the food, and a Bugati roadster are essential props.

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Lucienne Delamare and Pierre Maury are having an affair. Lucienne's husband Paul is the mayor, and a French deputy. Pierre's wife Clotilde has been weak and sickly for years. Lucienne's husband holds no excitement for her, and he is always away in Paris on business. Pierre is now the vice-mayor, thanks to Paul. Lucienne and Pierre have a secret meeting spot by a lake along a country lane. Pierre's wife dies suddenly, by suicide the town gossips believe. Pierre confesses otherwise to Lucienne. Paul proposes a shady land deal which will "benefit the town", and wants Pierre's political support and collusion. Then Paul discovers proof of his wife's affair...

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Gerard and his 9-month-old son have been left by his wife for feminist reasons. The custody of his son is being threatened by his next romance.

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Dreams. Becoming an Atlantic City croupier will help Sally realize her dream of going to Monte Carlo, a symbol of the glamorous life that has been evading her since escaping from Saskatchewan a decade ago. Lou dreams that he was a great mobster in the old days. Grace came to Atlantic City for a Betty Grable look-alike contest and stayed to become the wife of a mobster. A brief visit to Atlantic City by Sally's estranged husband will change the course of the lives of Sally and Lou.

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Sèbastien Grenier,a secret agent eliminates all his rivals in order to decipher who has killed some of his associates.

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Louis Coline assists the head of advertising of a department store in decline. He has little to do, but seems content with his marriage to Nina, his visits to his mother and grandmother, and poker games with friends. When new boss Bernard Malair arrives to turn the store around, Louis fears for his job; but Bernard, with his numbers man Paul and his factotum Franèois, invites Louis into an inner circle of long hours of work, nightclubs, and dinners with an androgynous vamp. Nina objects, but Louis cannot say no to Bernard's demands, no matter how personal. In desperation, Nina leaves Louis, but that drives him further into Bernard's orbit. Can anything break this spell?

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On a movie set, in a factory, and at a hotel, Godard explores the nature of work, love and film making. While Solidarity takes on the Polish government, a Polish film director, Jerzy, is stuck in France making a film for TV. He's over budget and uninspired; the film, called "Passion," seems static and bloodless. Hanna owns the hotel where the film crew stays. She lives with Michel, who runs a factory where he's fired Isabelle, a floor worker. Hanna and Isabelle are drawn to Jerzy, hotel maids quit to be movie extras, people ask Jerzy where the story is in his film, women disrobe, extras grope each other off camera, and Jerzy wonders why there must always be a story.

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Max Baumstein is a reputable businessman, a rich self-made man with a conscience - he founded a highly visible and active international organization fighting against violations of human rights. Why would he commit an act that apparently negates the principles he has striven for so long to uphold? Eventually, he reveals a secret about himself that he kept hidden from his younger wife Lina, and that in a roundabout way concerns her as well. It is the conclusion of a struggle that started many decades earlier, when Elsa Wiener, a German singer exiled in Paris, without money or relations, a refugee among many others, faced two daunting problems: surviving in a foreign city, and saving her husband Michel from the clutches of the Nazis.

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A film musical in which every line is sung. The frame is about workers during a strike. They also prepare and perform a demonstration. Two personal relations develop against this background. Franèois abandons his pregnant girlfriend Violette. She feels treated even more unjust when he tries to defend and excuse his behaviour. He had met a very beautiful over-class girl, Edith, and both were immediately overwhelmed by genuine and reciprocal passion. Edith lived in a very unsatisfactory marriage. She was the daughter of the widow from which Franèois rented his room. Nevertheless, he met her in the street, where she just opened her fur coat and was starch naked under it. They will be together in great passion for just one night and day. At the demonstration Franèois is shot by the police and dies in Edith's arms. - The music is closer to opera than in any other film musical by Jacques Demy. But the greatest difference is that he has devoted much more effort to the task of instructing the singers to reveal the psychic emotions of the text and events.

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Two masters of chess duel each other not only in their game but also in their different ideologies. The veteran Akiva is a Soviet Jew and ferocious Communist, master of his game but also dealing with a declining health while the young and restless genius Pavius has defected to the West to escape from the Communism tentacles. Their differences will be put to test while they're both competing in the World Chess Championship, with a huge prize at stake just as much as the political ideologies behind those characters.

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Marc (Michel Piccoli) recruits Alex (Denis Lavant), son of his former, now dead colleague. Alex is a card shark with a big dream to go out to the world and leave his own mark. His determination leads him to break up with his girl friend, Lise (Julie Deply). Alex initially refuses to help Marc and Hans for their "job" of stealing the culture of new drug. But Anna (Juliette Binoche)'s charm and beauty were irresistible. Alex joins the elders. Alex's dance to David Bowie's Modern Love illustrates unfolding emotions of young Alex moving into an adult (graying if not dying) world. The interplay among the generations, between genders, among social classes, memory and hopes, all played against black and white and occasional red back drop. Anna's cobalt blue robe punctuates the moment when Alex confesses his love for her.

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Mad love. Two physicians, one old and one young, fall in love with the same woman, Juliette, a quixotic hairdresser. First, she is with Raoul, the older one; then passion for Clèment, the younger doctor, takes over. Raoul fights back, playing on Clèment's guilt and Juliette's lack of self-assurance; then, Clèment makes his case to Juliette, abandons his fiancèe, and takes her to the provinces where he sets up practice and asks her to have a baby. She panics and abruptly leaves Clèment, taking up with Raoul again. When she contracts Hodgkin's disease and the treatment does no good, Raoul believes she has the malady of love. Is there a cure?

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Like Vanya, in Malle's last film, Milou never left the family estate. His mother dies during the May 1968 student uprising in Paris. The brother who is the London correspondent for Le Monde keeps turning up the volume of the radio for the latest news. A deceased sister's interest in the estate is represented by a niece who is an antique dealer, who is most interested in grandmother's emerald ring that Milou's daughter Camille has already slipped on her finger. A non-relative, a truck driver who can't deliver his load of tomatoes in Paris, brings a nephew who was part of the uprising. Everyone is on strike and the matriarch can't be buried.

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The former famous painter Frenhofer lives quietly with his wife in his countryside residence in the French Provence. When the young artist Nicolas visits him with his girlfriend Marianne, Frenhofer decides to start working again on a painting called 'La Belle Noiseuse', which he gave up a long time ago. And he wants Marianne as a model. The ensuing creative process will change the characters' lives. It will become a struggle for truth and meaning, and the question about the limits of art will arise.

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France, 1815. After his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon heads for exile. Royalists occupy Paris and attempt to restore the monarchy. However, the battle doesn't seem to be over. On July 6, Talleyrand, a shrewd politician of flexible convictions, invites chief of police and zealous revolutionary Fouchè to supper and tries to convince him to serve the king. Over the meal they insult each other, accuse each other, and, at first sight, look like mortal enemies. But they definitely have one thing in common: they are both power-hungry.

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Monsieur Cinema, a hundred years old, lives alone in a large villa. His memories fade away, so he engages a young woman to tell him stories about all the movies ever made. Also a line of movie stars comes to visit him giving him back the pleasure of life - but amongst them there are also some young students only striving after his money for the realization of their film projects. The two stories - Monsieur Cinema's and the young people's life - are told in parallel until they come together in the end when the old man plays a role in the film made by the students.

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The McBee family has erected a government over a future 'colony', that looks like a run-down Paris divided into sectors by the Berlin Wall. All male family members suffer from a mysterious disease and are in urgent need of organ transplants. The perfect donor, Tykho Moon, probably has been killed in a fire, but according to rumours he's still alive. Although assassins stalk the family members, the McBees start a hunt for Tykho. Trying to escape the dragnet, Alex, a sculptor, meets Lena, a killer posing as a whore.

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At her son's funeral, Solange, a lawyer famous for losing hopeless cases, agrees to defend Renè, her son's age, accused of murdering his wealthy aunt, Jeanne, who's part of the Franco-Belgian Psychoanalytic Society, known for odd views and methods. She reads Jeanne's journal, documenting Renè's criminal tendencies. Solange believes him innocent, manipulated into the murder or framed. Odd psychiatrists turn up, including Georges Didier, who runs FBPS, and his rival, Christian, who believes crime originates in a story's taking hold of a person. After the verdict, Renè and Solange's relationship changes, Georges and his society commit a bizarre act, and the police record Solange's story.

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Young French officer Augustin Robert escorts artist Jean-Michel Venture de Paradis to Egypt during Napoleon's Egyptian campaign. Napoleon sent de Paradis to record Egypt's great monuments and temples that are destroyed by French soldiers in acts of barbarism. During combat, Augustin and Jean-Michel are separated from their regiment, and they start wandering through the desert fighting for their life. In one of the canyons Augustin meets a leopard he names Simoom and a strange bond between them appears.

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Didier never knew that a wrong film review of a film which he did not bother to watch would land him in numerous troubles.

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Young French officer Augustin Robert escorts artist Jean-Michel Venture de Paradis to Egypt during Napoleon's Egyptian campaign. Napoleon sent de Paradis to record Egypt's great monuments and temples that are destroyed by French soldiers in acts of barbarism. During combat, Augustin and Jean-Michel are separated from their regiment, and they start wandering through the desert fighting for their life. In one of the canyons Augustin meets a leopard he names Simoom and a strange bond between them appears.

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The comfortable daily routines of aging Parisian actor Gilbert Valence, 76, are suddenly shaken when he learns that his wife, daughter, and son-in-law have been killed in a car crash. Having to take care of his now-orphaned grandson, he struggles to go on with his lifelong acting career like he's used to. But the roles he is offered -- a flashy TV show and a hectic last-minute replacement in an English-language film of Joyce's Ulysses -- finally convince him that it's time to retire.

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Belle toujours occurred to me unexpectedly and, as I had the will to pay my tribute to Luis Buèuel and Jean-Claude Carrière, I was happy to have found a way to do so, perhaps the best, and I started working. What is it about? Taking two of the strange characters from the film Belle de Jour, and make them relive, thirty eight years later, in the strangeness of a secret which was only in the possession of the masculine character and a knowledge that had become crucial to the female character. Thus, passed this time, they meet again. She tries to avoid him by all means. But he stalks her and eventually manages to gain her attention with the intention of revealing the secret that he alone can unfold. They set a meeting, a dinner, where she expects that all will be revealed. During dinner, she, now a widow, awaits the expected revelation: what he had told her husband while he was mute and paralytic because of a gunshot wound fired by a lover of hers. The situation is tense and she ends up in despair without being able to find out what in truth happened. He is satisfied in his sadism and in his particular revenge from the ways of that woman, who deep down desired him but whose haughty ways never allowed him to possess her.

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In Majorca, in 1823, a French general, Armand de Montriveau, overhears a cloistered nun singing in a chapel; he insists on speaking to her. She is Antoinette, for five years he has searched for her. Flash back to their meeting in Paris, he recently returned from Africa, she married and part of the highest society. She flirts with him, and soon he's captivated. His behavior is possessive, insistent. Then, it is her turn to become obsessed. Letters, balls, scandal, a kidnapping, and an ultimatum bring her to the cloister and him to melancholy. Whose steel proved sharper? Is it tragic or grotesque?

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Beneath the rooftops of Paris - The song is no longer the same. Beneath the rooftops of Paris today, it's sweltering... Above all, when one is very old, or very poor ... Dying slowly in servants' quarters, little by little. But embracing too. - Even now.

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At the Vatican, following the demise of the Pope, the conclave to elect his successor settles on Cardinal Melville. But the faithful gathered in St Peter's Square wait in vain for the new Pope to step out on the balcony. What is going on? Behind the thick walls of the Vatican panic has set in. After uttering a terrible howl of fear, the Cardinal refuses the office. The officials do everything to try to reason with Melville, including a psychoanalyst, appointed by the Vatican... Do we really have a Pope?