The best Jacques Villeret’s drama movies

Lucien, 14, can’t understand why his father, a serious and respected teacher, makes a fool of himself by dressing up as a clown and giving a show. André, Lucien’s father’s best friend, feels for the teenager and decides to reveal something from their mutual past that will explain the reason for Lucien’s father’s strange behavior.

The film follows four families, with different nationalities (French, German, Russian and American) but with the same passion for music, from the 1930s to the 1960s. The various story lines cross each other time and again in different places and times, with their own theme scores that evolve as time passes. The main event in the film is the Second World War, which throws the stories of the four musical families together and mixes their fates. Although all characters are fictional, many of them are loosely based on historical musical icons (Édith Piaf, Josephine Baker, Herbert von Karajan, Glenn Miller, Rudolf Nureyev, etc.) The Boléro dance sequence at the end brings all the threads together.

Danton and Robespierre were close friends and fought together in the French Revolution, but by 1793 Robespierre was France's ruler, determined to wipe out opposition with a series of mass executions that became known as the Reign of Terror. Danton, well known as a spokesman of the people, had been living in relative solitude in the French countryside, but he returned to Paris to challenge Robespierre's violent rule and call for the people to demand their rights. Robespierre, however, could not accept such a challenge, even from a friend and colleague, and he blocked out a plan for the capture and execution of Danton and his allies.

The film is set in Marais, a quiet region along the banks of Loire river in 1918. Riton is afflicted with a bad-tempered wife and three unruly children. Garris lives alone with his recollections of World War I trenches. Their daily life consists of seasonal work and visits from their two pals: Tane, the local train conductor and Amédée, a dreamer and voracious reader of classics.

1920. Jean Rezeau and his elder brother were living happily in their family estate in Brittany, until the death of their grandmother. The return of their mother, a worthy descendant of fairytales' witches, brings an all new atmosphere to their home.

After a life of emotional and professional upsets, Alex finds himself headwaiter in a chic Parisian restaurant. Well into middle age, divorced but still very much a ladies’ man, he has one great ambition: to open an amusement park by the sea. One day, an old flame, Claire, suddenly re-enters his life. For Alex, the fires of love are easily re-kindled, but Claire has another man in her life…

As every summer, Georges Lajoie, his wife Ginette and grown-up son Léon go on holiday to Loulou's campsite. They join old friends, the Schumachers and the Colins. Brigitte Colin, the daughter, is quite a pretty young girl now. One day, Georges rapes and murders her. He hides the body near the barracks of the immigrant Arab workers. The racism of the campers will do the rest... A virulent lampoon against the average Frenchman's racism.

This family drama is the sequel to director Henri Verneuil's autobiographical film, Mayrig. It takes place some forty years after the end of the previous film. In the earlier film, a young man has moved with his family to Marseilles from Armenia and is adapting to his new country to the best of his ability. This tends to put him in conflict with his traditional Armenian family. Nonetheless, they are all hardworking and loving. Now, forty years later, the lead character has changed his name to Pierre Zakar, because it is easier for the French to pronounce and relate to. He has also become a very successful playwright.

"In Serieux comme le plaisir, two men and a woman live quite happily together in a romantic liaison. The woman is probably wealthy anyway, so the trio doesn't worry much about money. One day they decide to take a trip in their beat-up car, managing the whole affair in their own special, insouciant manner. They are followed by a suspicious policeman who thinks there's something fishy about this group..."

When he inherits the family house and property after his mother's death, aspiring novelist Fane returns home with his bimbo girlfriend Lilas. He must care for his idiot brother Mo and contend with a greedy garage owner who covets Fane's property to expand his business. When efforts to buy the property are fruitless, the mechanic incites the townsfolk against the strange trio.

Elizabeth and her daughter Cecile spend their holidays at a lakeside resort in the French mountains. Elizabeth falls in love with a strange Italian, Giovanni, while young Cecile is courted by an apprentice cook. It seems that mother and daughter are drifting apart from each other, but then their holidays are over.

In southern France, in a quiet little town, the mayor, who also owns a castle with some cattle, is in the wine cellar with some other people: the pharmacist, the veterinary, and some of his employees. As they are drinking wine, they hear a terrible noise and the heat's getting higher and higher. They don't realize what's happening: when they come out of the cellar, they realize that everything has burned, and all the buildings are destroyed...

This film is made up several sketches in which certain actors play several real or fictional roles to a background of rock music. The lead character, played by Godard himself, is an annoyingly perfectionist film-maker determined to wring every last drop of the finest performance possible from his stars.

During a robbery that goes wrong, Valentin Tralande kills his accomplices and bank customers.

Imprisoned as an accessory to murder, Catherine gives birth to a son she conceived in prison. Eighteen years later, her sentence served, she is reunited with the boy, Simon, who has remained in an orphanage the entire time. She is accompanied by toothsome prison buddy Sarah, and gradually these people whose lives have been frozen in time "thaw" and get on with the business of living.