Jacques Denis

The Surveyors

A lazy surveyor is thwarted by two women whose houses he is surveying for destruction to make way for a park. In another realm of the story, a man is given a hat by another man, who asks him to give his fiancé a gift. However, he mistakenly gives the gift to another girl entirely, and makes love to her.

Swing troubadour

In Brazzaville, in 1944, Alex Emmerich was sentenced to wander the seas by Hélène Latray, the wife of Félix Beauvois, the man Alex loved. In 1962, exiled on Hatray cruises and feeling the coming death, Alex decides to compose for his love a testament: the photographic report of his agony.

Les nénuphars

Arthur and Marcel, two firemen, keep boredom at bay by improvising on stage, one on a keyboard the other on drums, tunes, poems and songs. Carol arrives, in search of her lover Armand. Accompanied by the musicians, she sings of her strange loves.

Our Story

Robert Avranche, a middle-aged, alcoholic garage owner, is sitting on a train, reflecting on the emptiness of his life. An attractive young woman, Donatienne, suddenly enters the compartment and offers to make love to him. Robert accepts but, when the woman leaves the train afterwards, he decides to follow her...

Fourbi

Writer Paul attempts to interview Rosemonde, a young woman who killed an alleged rapist in self-defense six years prior, for a true crime television program. When Rosemonde refuses to divulge details of the events, Paul encourages his actress girlfriend to befriend her, but the three are repeatedly sidetracked from their initial commission.

Monsieur Abel

A retired old man sees his life turned upside down by the discovery of the corpse of a young woman.

Clémence Aletti

Quartier nègre

In 1937, the young French engineer Jo Dupuche landed a job in Ecuador, with the promise of a better life. While he stops on a Caribbean island, he discovers that the mine where he was hired has gone bankrupt and finds himself penniless. Trapped with his wife in the tropics, the couple must cope. While his wife finds work thanks to white settlers, Jo is housed in a ghetto where he forms a romantic relationship with a young prostitute. Shot on 35mm in Cuba at the end of the 1980s with all the constraints inherent to the country, this TV film paints an uncompromising picture of colonialism in line with the eponymous novel by Simenon (1934).

Un paquebot dans la tête

Chocolat

On her way to visit her childhood home in a colonial outpost in Northern Cameroon, a young French woman recalls her childhood, her memories concentrating on her family's houseboy.

Instinct de femme

Young - beautiful - married, fulfilled, Martha is bored. Passive in an active society, she took a first step by serving as a "guinea pig" to her brother researcher who undertook a comparative study on animal behavior and human behavior.

Femmes Fatales

Two men, fortyish, worn out by their wives, abandon everything to go and live in the back of beyond. There they meet a truculent priest, a boozer, Émile who recalls them to life's simple pleasures. Calm is what they want. But soon their example inspires thousands of disorientated males...

James or Not

As he sets off for the countryside outside Geneva a taxi-driver hears a gunshot and notices a shadowy figure slipping away from the scene. So begins a series of strange incidents.

Plurielles

A couple deal with their problems like any other, while actors read Friedrich Engels' "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", and in interviews, the director discusses the status of women in 1978.

The Middle of the World

Paul is married, a successful engineer, and a conservative candidate in an upcoming local election. He falls in love with Adriana, a café waitress from Italy. Paul's party is very critical of foreign labour and wants to keep Switzerland to the Swiss. Where Paul falls deeper and deeper into the relationship and is ready to leave his wife, Adriana feels the social pressure growing and has to make her own decision.