Thumbs Up (1971)

Beatrice celebrates with her family the release of her book: she tells about the accident of her husband Frederic. He became blind and without filter - always so funny and seductive, he is totally unpredictable. But this book, hymn-to-life, will turn into a joyful fist because if Beatrice changed the names, each of his friends seeks to find his character. The book awakens secret jealousies, while the group of friends and family pitch.

Vincent, a wealthy real estate agent, is invited to dinner by his sister Elizabeth and her husband Peter, both professors in Paris. Claude, a childhood friend and trombonist in a symphony orchestra, is also present. Vincent brings news from the prenatal examination of his and his wife Anna's unborn son. The name chosen by the soon-to-be parents strongly offends the others for many reasons. The dispute between the guests quickly escalates and before long the resurgence of old grudges and hidden secrets is unavoidable...

Alexandre, a young and honest farmer, is oppressed by an authoritarian wife, who makes him work like a dog. When she dies in a car crash, he decides to stay in bed, absolutely free and inactive. Just a dog is occupied to carry food and newspapers to him.

At 55, Anne is finally enjoying her freedom after her children leave home. But everything changes when her 23-year-old daughter, Louise, moves back in with her after a professional and romantic failure. And to make matters worse, her son, Théo, announces that she's going to be a grandmother! Anne realizes that life never goes as planned and that, at any age, we are still learning to grow up.

How to become a man when your mother and your closed circle have decided otherwise? This is the challenge Guillaume took up. The film recounts Guillaume's tragicomic battle from the young age of eight, as he adopts the role of a girl then of a homosexual... until, aged 30, he meets the woman who, after his mother, will become the other woman in his life. Beyond this story of a heterosexual coming-out, the film tells the tale of an actor who never stopped loving women, maybe even a little too much.

Vincent Machot knows his life by heart. He shares it between his hair dressing salon, his cousin, his cat, and his too-invasive mother. But life sometimes holds surprises, even for the most prudent of people... He crosses paths with Rosalie Blum by accident. She is a mysterious and solitary woman whom he is sure he has already met. But where? Intrigued, he decides to follow her everywhere, in the hope of knowing more about her.

A son finds an escape from his turbulent marriage with his slightly dysfunctional and quirky parents who are hiding a young boy from the authorities.

Sandra, a young woman forced to leave the south of France to flee a violent husband. Without attachment, she returned to Boulogne-sur-Mer, the city of her childhood which she left almost 15 years ago. She finds her mother there and a world she left behind. Without money, she is hired in a fish cannery where she befriends two workers. But one day, one of her colleagues tackles her insistently, she defends herself and kills him accidentally.

Two friends, one a musician the other constantly depressed wander around Greece and France till they get to Paris without a penny to their name. Here they spend nights in the underground, and squat in houses with the African immigrants. One day they both fall in love with Mathilde a blond dancer and follow her to New York.

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.