TV Guide: Isabelle Adjani

Video: Camille Claudel

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:36:41 -0400

The troubled life of French sculptor Camille Claudel and her long relationship with legendary sculptor Auguste Rodin are portrayed in this passionate biographical drama, featuring an acclaimed performance by Isabelle Adjani. Beginning in the 1880s with a young Claudel's first meeting with Rodin, the film traces the development of their intense romantic bond. The growth of this relationship coincides with the rise of Claudel's career, helping her overcome prejudices against female artists. However, their romance soon sours, due to the increasing pressures of Rodin's fame and his love for another woman. These difficulties combine with her increasing doubts about the value of her work to drive Claudel into an emotional tumult that threatens to become insanity. First-time director Bruno Nuytten had previously served as a cinematographer, and he brings this experience to bear in his loving presentation of Claudel's sculpture and the lavish period setting. The dramatic approach is in tune with the impressive visu

Video: Driver, The

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:07:45 -0400

Walter Hill's stripped down neo-noir features a protagonist who makes the laconic boxer of the director's similar Hard Times (1974) seem logorrheic by comparison. The film's tone is set in the opening scene as the Driver (Ryan O'Neal) gloms a V-8 sedan and proceeds to whip through claustrophobic parking garages, narrow alleyways, and sundry other high-risk macadam, as he demonstrates why he's known as the best getaway driver in the business to some potential clients, before giving his vehicle a proper burial. Such plot as there is in this highly abstract film concerns the Driver's cat and mouse game with the Detective (Bruce Dern), an employee of the constabulary of an unnamed city, intent on his arrest. A mysterious and beautiful woman, the Player (Isabelle Adjani), soon appears on the Driver's radar, a perfect match for his taciturnity. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide.

Video: Diabolique

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 02:25:59 -0400

Henri-Georges Clouzot's classic French thriller gets a Hollywood makeover in this glossy remake. Guy Baran (Chazz Palminteri) is the dull, loutish headmaster of a private school that has seen better days. While Guy oversees the day to day operations, the school is actually owned by his wife Mia (Isabelle Adjani), whose spirit has been crushed by Guy's casual cruelty and whose health is frail. Guy has been openly having an affair with one of his teachers, Nicole Horner (Sharon Stone), who has almost as much contempt for Guy as Mia. Mia and Nicole eventually join forces against their common enemy and plan to murder him and conceal the evidence. However, while the killing goes as planned, Guy's body mysteriously disappears from the carefully chosen spot where it was dumped, and when a chatty detective, Shirley Vogel (Kathy Bates) begins asking questions, both women begin to wonder who knows what about their murderous scheme. This was the third remake of Les Diaboliques, following two made-for-TV adaptations, Ref

Video: Bon Voyage

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 01:00:11 -0400

The last frantic days before the Germans seized France in 1940 provide an unlikely backdrop for this dark comedy. Viviane (Isabelle Adjani) is a glamorous and well-known film actress who attracts the attentions of many men -- often many she has no interest in knowing. One night, at a reception following the premiere of her latest picture, Viviane finds herself pursued by Beaufort (G rard Depardieu), a government official whose girth exceeds his charm. To throw him off her trail, Viviane allows a cranky older man, Andr Arpel (Nicolas Vaude), to escort her home. During the evening, Viviane and Andr quarrel, and after slapping him, she discovers that he has simply dropped dead. An understandably terrified Viviane calls a former boyfriend, Fr d ric Roger (Gr gori Derang re), and asks him to help her get rid of the body. In hopes of reviving their romance, he agrees, but after an auto accident, Fr d ric is caught with the body, and is taken to jail to await his trial. When word gets out that German troo

Video: Ishtar

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:45:17 -0400

Considered one of the great box-office turkeys of its decade, Ishtar was an attempt by writer/director Elaine May and stars Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty to do a modern-day road picture in the style of the much-loved Bob Hope and Bing Crosby comedy classics. Beatty is Lyle Rogers, a dimwitted songwriter who befriends and partners with Chuck Clarke (Hoffman), who is only slightly more intelligent but every bit as untalented. Together the duo dreams of becoming a big-time lounge act, but their songs, with titles like That a Lawnmower Can Do All That, are unintentionally hilarious. Chuck becomes suicidal, but just when it seems they'll never strike it rich, the boys are offered a shady gig at a North African hotel, entertaining U.S. troops stationed in the tiny nation of Ishtar. On their way to accept the job, Lyle, Chuck, and their blind camel are sidetracked by a mysterious woman (Isabelle Adjani) and a scheming CIA agent (Charles Grodin), who are involved in a rebellion against the country's emir. The memo

Video: Possession

Video Detective — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:27:38 -0400

Usually misattributed to the horror genre, this challenging and highly unusual drama stars Isabelle Adjani as a young woman who forsakes her husband (Sam Neill) and her lover (Heinz Bennent) for a bizarre, tentacled creature that she keeps in a run-down Berlin apartment. In the beginning, her husband knows nothing about the monster and sincerely believes that his wife is insane. He has her tailed by private detectives, whom she kills and feeds to the creature. Still unaware of what has happened, the husband contends with the reserved and inadvertently seductive presence of his wife's look-alike (also played by Adjani), a schoolteacher who frequently comes to tutor his son while his wife is away. Though tempted by her quiet goodness and beauty, he is still passionately in love with his wife and even after he finds out about the murders, he stays by her side and helps her conceal her crimes. Filmed amidst the oppressive backdrop of the Berlin Wall by the expatriate Polish director Andrzej Zulawski (who was unab