The best Didier Bénureau’s movies

This outrageous time-travel comedy follows the misadventures of a wacky medieval knight (Jean Reno) and his faithful servant when they are accidentally transported to contemporary times by a senile sorcerer. Mayhem rules as these 12th-century visitors try adapting to the wildly confusing modern world. To avoid being stuck here for good, however, they soon begin an all-out cosmic assault on their former castle -- now a luxury hotel -- in their quest to return to the past.

The sequel to The Visitors reunites us with those lovable ruffians from the French Medieval ages who - through magic - are transported into the present, with often drastic consequences. Godefroy de Montmirail travels to today to recover the missing family jewels and a sacred relic, guarantor of his wife-to-be's fertility. The confrontation between Godefroy's repellent servant Jack the Crack and his descendent, the effete Jacquart, present-day owner of the chateau, further complicates the matter.

It is 1943 in Paris. Like so many others, the Bourbelle family's home has been taken over by the Germans and they now live in their cellar. Little do they know that the son, Guy-Hubert Bourdelle, is far from being the cowardly hairdresser he pretends. He is in truth the Germans’ most feared opponent: le super-résistant!

Franck shows up in a gossip magazine photo behind a brawling TV star at a football match.

Doctor Valois has invented the "flashage", a cure for depressed people. After having tested it on monkeys, he tries with a first human patient, Alain Durieux. This is great success, everybody's happy except may be Alain's wife, Jeanne, who's worrying about the changes in Alain's personality. Other patients use the treatment with similar successes, and Valois's happy about it. But the monkeys are changing: non-cured ones are made mad by the over-stability and stereotyped behaviour of the cured ones. So are the humans. When Valois realises he can't stop the process, he decides to "flash" himself.

Camille, a naive schoolgirl meets an intriguing influence in Joelle, a slightly older and much more experienced spirit. Camille follows her new friend through the discovery of sex and the darker side of life. As the film progresses, Camille discovers AIDS and the fear that she may have picked up the disease in her early encounters.

In a penitentiary, four prisoners occupy a cell: Carrère, who used his company to commit a fraud and was betrayed by his wife; the drag Marcus and his protégée, the retarded Paquerette, who ate his six month old sister; and the intellectual, Lassalle who killed his wife. One night, Carrère finds an ancient journal hidden in a hole in the wall of the cell. They realize that the book was written by Danvers in the beginning of the last century and is about black magic. They decide to read and use its content to escape from the prison, when they find the truth about Danvers' fate.

Frédérique's mother has died recently leaving her the family stud farm. She's never met her father, doesn't even know his name. But she finds it on the back of an old photo. She sets off for Paris. She stays with her gay dancer pal Marc. Marc and friends decide to go to their favourite gay bar... but it's men only. So Frédérique becomes Frédéric, an effeminate gay boy... Frédérique follows her father. Pierre Arroux is an art curator - and gay. She introduces herself to him, but as Frédéric. So while Frédéric is quite an awkward young man and an embarrassment to his father, Frédérique is secretly meeting with her old boyfriend now living in Paris..

Claire Doste is about to reach the age of 35 and has everything one dreams of, such as having four boyfriends and a creative job in a publishing house specialising in crime novels. One day, she invites all of her boyfriends to her birthday dinner so that she can pick out her would-be fiancé. But an accident happens when Claire is getting the dinner ready.

Grégoire Moulin, a shy accountant, sets up a blind date with a dance teacher at a bar. What he needed to do was just to cross the road. But it didn't happen to be as easy as it seems especially because of the final game of French soccer championship the very same night!

A car dealer, well-to-do and with a beautiful wife, finds himself attracted to his rather plain new temporary secretary. Despite her own commitments she feels the same and the two soon embark on an affair. Though it would seem it has happened before his wife finds this particular entanglement of her husband's very difficult to accept.

Gabrielle Deneige is an independent, ambitious TV weather girl torn between her love of a distinguished author several decades her senior, and the attentions of a headstrong, potentially unstable young suitor. An unspoken past between the two men heightens tensions, and though she's initially certain of her love for one them, the see-saw demands and whims of both men keep confusing - and darkening - matters. Before long she's encountering emotional and societal forces well beyond her control, inexorably leading to a shocking clash of violence and passion.

A story is about young teenage girl, with sister and brothers, a pleasant uncle and aunt, an annoying nanny, a young boy interested in kissing her, a close relationship with the imaginary addressee of her daily diary and her parents' disintegrating marriage - all this in a rented house in a summer resort.

Not long before World War I, in a French Alpine town near the Italian border, a pack of slaughtered wolves is delivered to local taxidermist Leon (Patrick Chesnais). A surviving black cub comes down from the mountains looking for his family, and is saved from discovery and certain death by Leon’s young daughter Angele, who releases him back into the wild. The Great War comes and goes, making local foundry owners the Garcins rich. Family patriarch Albert Garcin (Michel Galabru), who happens to be Angele’s godfather, has given a free lifetime’s lease of a shack in the hills to a gypsy woman (played in flashbacks by Elisa Tovati in which she’s seen, literally, having dances with wolves on stage). Her son Guiseppe (Stefano Accorsi), who appears to be slightly mentally handicapped, guards the wolves he’s befriended up there, especially the black pack leader he calls Carbone.

Horty, a French foundry worker, wins a contest and is sent to see the sailing of the Titanic. In England, Marie, saying she is a chambermaid on the Titanic and cannot get a room, asks to share his room. They do, chastely; when he awakens, she is gone, but he sees her at the sailing and gets a photo of her. When he returns home, he suspects that his wife Zoe has been sleeping with Simeon, the foundry owner. Horty goes to the bar, where his friends get him drunk and he starts telling an erotic fantasy of what happened with him and Marie, drawing a larger audience each night.

Despite his fame, Taillandier has suddenly stopped painting. Deeply depressed, the sixty-year-old decides to go away. He has no clear goal and explains nothing to his close friends. During his travels, he has a strange encounter with Marylou, a wild teenager who was rejected by her mother. The lost girl and the man at the end of his tether will travel together awhile. Finally living like a father and daughter, at peace.

In the 15th century, in a poor Italian village, the monks of a modest convent take up an abandoned baby. Unfortunately, for all their efforts, they prove unable to trace his parents. So they set up providing tender loving care to the little boy. Marcellino lives a happy life among the men of God but, as he grows up, he misses his mother more and more.

Maxime and Gerard are a couple of white-collar criminals condemned to 5 years in prison. Sandrine Athan, an honest and principled young police officer, is assigned the banal task of escorting them to the nearest prison in Melun. Things get complicated when killers try to knock them off. Meanwhile, they must contend with strikes which have paralyzed the country and make travelling a nightmare. Added to this mess are the prisoners' many botch escape attempts. All these complications turn a simple transfer into a hellish adventure.