Belle de jour / Beauty of the Day (1967)
Drama | Romance
A frigid young housewife decides to spend her midweek afternoons as a prostitute.
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli, Geneviève Page, Pierre Clémenti, Françoise Fabian
Director: Luis Buñuel
The Phantom of Liberty / Le fantôme de la liberté (1974)
Comedy
A series of surreal sequences that critique morality and society in a stream of consciousness style.
Starring: Jean-Claude Brialy, Adolfo Celi, Michel Piccoli, Adriana Asti, Julien Bertheau, Paul Frankeur
Director: Luis Buñuel
Death in the Garden / La mort en ce jardin (1956)
Adventure | Drama
Adventurer Shark comes to a small village near a diamond-miners' camp, and local police arrest him, accusing him of having committed a bank robbery in a neighboring town. The police also confiscate the diamond mine for the state, which incites the miners to revolt, but they're defeated. Shark, Father Lizzardi, Castin, his daughter, and Djin, a whore Castin loves, flee into the jungle and fight for their lives.
Starring: Simone Signoret, Georges Marchal, Charles Vanel, Michel Piccoli, Tito Junco, Michèle Girardon
Director: Luis Buñuel
La belle noiseuse / The Beautiful Troublemaker (1991)
Drama
The former famous painter Frenhofer revisits an abandoned project using the girlfriend of a young visiting artist. Questions about truth, life, and artistic limits are explored.
Starring: Michel Piccoli, Jane Birkin, Emmanuelle Béart, Marianne Denicourt
Director: Jacques Rivette
Passion / Godard's Passion (1982)
Comedy | Drama
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.
Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Hanna Schygulla, Michel Piccoli, Jerzy Radziwilowicz
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Une chambre en ville / A Room in Town (1982)
Drama | Musical
In this musical melodrama set against the backdrop of a workers' strike in Nantes, a young woman who wishes to leave her brutish husband for an earthy steelworker, though he is involved with another. Unbeknownst to the girl, the object of her affection boards with her no-nonsense baroness mother.
Starring: Dominique Sanda, Danielle Darrieux, Richard Berry, Michel Piccoli, Jean-François Stévenin
Director: Jacques Demy
The Young Girls of Rochefort / Les demoiselles de Rochefort (1967)
Comedy | Drama | Musical | Romance
Jacques Demy followed up THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG with another musical about missed connections and second chances, this one a more effervescent confection. Twins Delphine and Solange, a dance instructor and a music teacher (played by real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac), long for big-city life; when a fair comes through their quiet port town, so does the possibility of escape. With its jazzy Michel Legrand score, pastel paradise of costumes, and divine supporting cast (George Chakiris, Grover Dale, Danielle Darrieux, Michel Piccoli and Gene Kelly), THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT is a tribute to Hollywood optimism from sixties French cinema's preeminent dreamer.
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, George Chakiris, Françoise Dorléac, Gene Kelly, Jacques Perrin, Michel Piccoli
Director: Jacques Demy
Péril en la demeure / Peril / Death in a French Garden (1985)
Crime | Drama | Mystery | Romance | Thriller
A magnate and his younger wife hire David to teach guitar to their teenage daughter. The wife quickly seduces David, and simultaneously he strikes up an acquaintance with the family's inquisitive neighbor. One night, David is mugged but rescued from injury by a stranger, Daniel, who also becomes David's friend and admits to being a hit man. Video tapes of their activities appear in the lovers' mail; David thinks they're from the neighbor, Daniel is sure the husband is onto the affair and hired the mugger. After Daniel tells David that he's been hired to kill the husband, an elaborate manipulation plays out, with murder, suicide, a payoff, more videos, and a surprise pairing.
Starring: Anémone, Richard Bohringer, Nicole Garcia, Christophe Malavoy, Michel Piccoli
Director: Michel Deville
Le sucre (1978)
Crime | Drama | Thriller
One influent person make the curves of the sugar price rocket up artificially on the stock market whereas on the other side of the power another person losses all his money when the market crash down after somebody advised him to invest on sugar.
Starring: Michel Piccoli, Jean Carmet, Gérard Depardieu
Director: Jacques Rouffio
Habemus Papam / We Have a Pope (2011)
Comedy | Drama
At the Vatican, following the demise of the Pope, the conclave to elect his successor settles on Cardinal Melville. The officials do everything to try to reason with Melville, including a psychoanalyst, appointed by the Vatican.
Starring: Michel Piccoli, Nanni Moretti, Jerzy Stuhr, Margherita Buy
Director: Nanni Moretti
Holy Motors (2012)
Drama | Fantasy
From dawn to dusk, a few hours in the life of Monsieur Oscar, a shadowy character who journeys from one life to the next. He is, in turn, captain of industry, assassin, beggar, monster, family man…
Starring: Edith Scob, Eva Mendes, Denis Lavant, Kylie Minogue, Jeanne Disson, Michel Piccoli, Elise Lhomeau
Director: Leos Carax
Atlantic City (1980)
Crime | Drama | Romance
Atlantic City is revitalized as a resort when gambling is legalized. But the new industry also brings unsettling changes. For Lou (Burt Lancaster), 40 years a bodyguard-boyfriend to aging beauty queen Grace (Kate Reid), his number-running sideline escalates to mob involvement.
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, Kate Reid, Michel Piccoli
Director: Louis Malle
Topaz (1969)
Thriller
The Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, brought a best-selling spy novel to the screen with riveting results in this spellbinding espionage thriller. John Forsythe star as an American CIA agent who hires a French operative named Devereaux (Frederick Stafford) to go to Cuba and check out rumours of Russian missiles and a NATO spy called Topaz.
Starring: Dany Robin, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, John Forsythe, Karin Dor, Frederick Stafford
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
