EIGHT CESAR NOMINATIONS!
Best Director, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Sound, Original Score, Set Design, Costumes, Editing
Ineffably graceful, master director Alain Resnais’ celebrated new film is a heartbreakingly delicate meditation on loss and uncertainty, adapted from the award-winning play by Alan Ayckbourn. Set inside a magically snow-bound Paris in the largely renovated and modernised district of Bercy, six lonely souls converge and commingle in their quest for love.
Thierry (André Dussolllier) is the real estate agent smitten with his pious assistant, Charlotte (Sabine Azéma). She moonlights as a home-care attendant for the hell-raising father (Claude Rich) of widowed bartender, Lionel (Pierre Arditi). Lionel works at a stylish modern bar that is frequented by an embittered army veteran, Dan (Lambert Wilson). Dan parts with his fiancée Nicole (Laura Morante) and meets Gaëlle (Isabelle Carré) a shy, lovely young woman who lives with her brother, Thierry, the real-estate agent.
Resnais (Smoking/No Smoking, Not On The Lips) exquisitely traces the converging lives and inchoate yearnings of these disparate characters and their setting with serene wisdom and a deepening sense of human frailty. The superb cast, who each give heart-rending and subtle performances, aids this impression immeasurably.
CŒURS was one of the critical hits of the 2006 Venice Film Festival and also a favourite of the jury, who awarded Resnais the prize for Best Director.
France/Italy 2006 - Drama (125 mins)
In French with English Subtitles
Director: Alain Resnais
Script: Alain Resnais, Jean-Michel Ribes, Alan Ayckbourn
Cast: Sabine Azéma, Isabelle Carré, Laura Morante,
Pierre Arditi, André Dussollier