Le Débutant (1986)

The mayor of Lyon, Paul Théraneau, is in a delicate position. After 30 years in politics, he is running out of ideas and is faced with a feeling of existential emptiness. To overcome this, Paul hires a young and brilliant philosopher, Alice Heimann. Then follows a dialogue between two diametrically opposed personalities who will turn their certainties upside down.

During the summer of 1968, Leon, a 10-year-old boy, navigates the hardships of young love, his lunatic mother's whims, and his urges to vandalize the house of his neighbors.

Hired to helm an Americanized take on a British play, director Lloyd Fellowes does his best to control an eccentric group of stage actors. With a star actress quickly passing her prime, a male lead with no confidence, and a bit actor that's rarely sober, chaos ensues in the lead up to a Broadway premiere.

A disgraced political journalist placed in the soccer section, Miss Pove is asked to follow the presidential campaign in progress. The front-runner is a fifty-year-old heir to a powerful French family and a political novice. Troubled by this candidate, whom she has known to be less smooth in the past, Miss Pove embarks on an investigation that is as surprising as it is jubilant.

An upper middle-class French family celebrates a birthday in a restaurant. In one evening and during one meal, family history, tensions, collective and separate grudges, delights, and memories both clash and coalesce.

Michel Mortez travels around France hosting a radio game show he created 25 years ago. He is famous among the average Frenchmen. Rivetot, his assistant and technician, always goes with him. He is the only one who knows what really lies under Mortez's appearance of a playful don Juan. When the program is canceled, Rivetot delays telling Mortez as long as possible... Both malicious and tender, this bitter comedy also shows nostalgia.

Paris, in the early 1960s. Jean-Louis Joubert is a serious but uptight stockbroker, married to Suzanne, a starchy class-conscious woman and father of two arrogant teenage boys, currently in a boarding school. The affluent man lives a steady yet boring life. At least until, due to fortuitous circumstances, Maria, the charming new maid at the service of Jean-Louis' family, makes him discover the servants' quarter on the sixth floor of the luxury building he owns and lives in. There live a crowd of lively Spanish maids who will help Jean-Louis to open to a new civilization and a new approach of life. In their company - and more precisely in the company of beautiful Maria - Jean-Louis will gradually become another man, a better man.

Jobless loner Eddie Vuibert gets a lucky break when a rich Jewish entrepreneur mistakes him for a Jew and gives him a sweet job in the Parisian fashion district.

At 19, passionate about street art, Naëlle (Najaa Bensaid) is forced to follow a reintegration project with other young people, her last chance to avoid being separated from her loved ones. Touched by the young girl, Hélène (Agnès Jaoui), the site manager and her instructor, introduces her one day to the Maison des Compagnons de Nantes, a world of traditions that promotes craftsmanship excellence and transmission between generations. Alongside Paul (Pio Marmai), a companion stained glass artist who agrees to take her for training in his studio, Naëlle discovers a universe with codes very different from hers that could give new meaning despite her difficulties in life. Naëlle will carve a place for herself in the fascinating world of stained glass and will realize that the Companions' values are not just empty words.

In a life full of triumph and failure, "National Lampoon" co-founder Doug Kenney built a comedy empire, molding pop culture in the 1970s.