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Jessica has moved from her small Burgundian town of Mâcon to Paris to start a new life, inspired by her grandmother, Madame Roux, who "always loved luxury". In Paris, she initially has trouble finding work, and spends one evening without shelter. She eventually gets a job waitressing in a small café, the Bar des Théâtres, even though the café had never hired female waitstaff, out of tradition. The owner hires Jessica only because he is expecting large crowds soon and needs staff. The café is in an area of Paris close by several artistic venues, including the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and a concert hall, on Avenue Montaigne. One of the backstage staff at the theatre, Claudie (Dani), helps to welcome Jessica to Paris. While working at the café, Jessica meets a number of people all dealing with various life crises or changes:
All three face pivotal turning points in their lives on the same night, with Jessica as a thread between all three.
Best scene in the film is when Jean-François is sick of the concert circuit, takes off his tuxedo, tie, & finishes the rest of the concert in his T-shirt.
Morgan was born Simone Renée Roussel in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a western suburb of Paris.
She left home at l’âge of 15 for Paris determined to become an actress. She took acting leçons from René Simon while serving as an extra in several films to pay for her drama classes. She was noticed by director Marc Allégret who offered her a major role in the film Gribouille in 1937, opposite Raimu. Then came the film Le Quai des brumes by Marcel Carné in 1938, opposite the great French actor Jean Gabin, and Remorques in 1941. These two films established her as one of the leading actress of the time in french cinema.
Upon the invasion of France in 1940 by the Germans, Morgan left for les États Unis and Hollywood where she was contracted to RKO Pictures. Her carrière there proved rather disappointing, apart from Joan of Paris opposite Paul Henreid in 1942, Higher and Higher opposite Frank Sinatra in 1943. She was tested and strongly considered for the female lead in Casablanca but RKO would not release her for the amount of money that Warner Bros. offered. Morgan did work for Warners in Passage to Marseille opposite Humphrey Bogart in 1944. Nothing major came her way.
The war over, Morgan returned to France and quickly picked up her career with the 1946 film, La symphonie pastorale by Jean Delannoy, which earned her the "Best Actress" award at the Cannes Film Festival. Other notable films include Fabiola (1949), The Proud and the Beautiful (1953) by Yves Allégret, Les Grandes Manœuvres by René Clair (1955), Marie-Antoinette reine de France (1956).
trois décennie (twah day sehn ee) -3 decades
l’âge (lahz) -the age
leçons (leh sohn) -lessons
les États Unis (layz ay taht yoo nee) -the United States
carrière (kah ree ehr) -career
Laurent (Alain Chabat) and Loli (Victoria Abril) are a thirty-ish married couple living in southern France avec their young child. He is an estate agent; she is a housewife. Laurent has extramarital affairs.
Loli is unaware that her husband is unfaithful. Then un jour, a truck breaks down in front of their home. The driver is Marijo (Josiane Balasko), a 40-ish butch lesbian who works as aplumber. She asks to use their phone. Loli has a stopped-up sink, so in exchange for using the téléphone, Marijo gets Loli's drain back in working order. Loli et Marijo begin an affair. Laurent is upset, but then his friend Antoine (Ticky Holgado) accidentally reveals Laurent's philandering to Loli. This seems to justify her amour. Marijo moves into the house.
Antoine then suggests that Laurent let Loli have her way, cease all hostility, and wait for the affair to burn out. Laurent agrees, and the household becomes a seemingly idyllic ménage à trois. But his strategy has its effect, especially after another lesbian couple, old friends of Marijo, happen by. Laurent welcomes them, but Loli becomes annoyed and jealous.
Marijo decides that the situation is not really going to travail. She knows that Laurent wants her to leave. While Loli is away on a trip, Marijo makes a deal with Laurent. She will break up with Loli and leave immediately, if Laurent will give her something she has wanted for years: a baby. Laurent has sex with Marijo to get her pregnant, and Marijo departs before Loli returns. Laurent tells Loli nothing, as agreed with Marijo.
Laurent and Loli settle back down to their old life, but their relationship has been deeply affected. Then Loli hears from a mutual acquaintance that Marijo is living in Paris and is several months pregnant. Loli is astonished and shocked. She insists that she and Laurent go to Paris and contact Marijo. They find her working as a DJ in a lesbian dance club. Their intrusion provokes a quarrel with the club owner, who fires Marijo. Loli and Laurent take her back to their home, where she has her baby.
The ménage à trois is re-established, with the two mothers caring for their enfants. In a final twist, Laurent is seen hesitantly flirting with a handsome male client.
enfants (ahn fahn) -children
travail (trah vah ee) -work
amour (ah morr) -love, romance
et (ay) -and
téléphone (tay lay fohn) -phone
un jour (uhn zhoor) -one day
avec (ah vehk) -with
couple (koo pluh) -couple
Kids, when you look up at the ceiling, point to it and say "un plafond"
Jean-Louis Trintignant (born on December 11, 1930 in Piolenc, Vaucluse) is a French actor.
At the age of twenty, Trintignant moved to Paris to study drama, and made his theatrical debut in 1951 going on to be seen as one of the most gifted French actors of the post-warera. After touring in the early 1950s in several theater productions, his first motion picture appearance came in 1955 and the following year he gained stardom with his performance opposite Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman.
From a wealthy family, he is the nephew of race car driver, Louis Trintignant, who was killed in 1933 while practicing on the Péronne racetrack in Picardie. His other uncle, Maurice Trintignant (1917-2005), was a Formula One driver who twice won the Monaco Grand Prix as well as the 24 hours of Le Mans. Raised in and around automobile racing, Jean-
Louis Trintignant was the natural choice of film director Claude Lelouch for the starring role of race car driver in the 1966 film, Un homme et une femme, a global success that made him an international star.
Trintignant’s acting was interrupted for several years by mandatory military service. After serving in Algiers, he returned to Paris and a very successful career.
Trintignant had leading roles in art-house classics such as The Sleeping Car Murders, Un homme et une femme (A Man and a Woman) (at the time the most successful French film ever screened in the foreign market), Bertolucci's The Conformist, and the 1969 political thrillerZ, in which he portrayed an idealistic young attorney.
He enjoyed an international following and won the Best Actor award at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.
In Italy, always dubbed into Italian, he worked with Valerio Zurlini in Summer Violent and The Desert of the Tartars, Ettore Scola's La terrazza, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist, but especially the cult film The Easy Life by Dino Risi.
Kids, yesterday we did "school bus". Today we are going to to a regular city bus. It is "l'autobus"
