AVENUE MONTAIGNE / (WS SUB DOL) - AVENUE MONTAIGNE / (WS SUB DOL)

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Product Description

French for "Orchestra Seats," Avenue Montaigne offers an outsider's perspective on an insular world (the original title is Fauteuils d'Orchestre). After bidding adieu to her grandmother (Suzanne Flon in her final performance), sunny Jessica (Cécile De France, L'Auberge Espagnole) moves from Mâcon to Paris. Upon securing a job as a waitress in a popular café, she meets high-strung soap star Catherine (Valérie Lemercier), burnt-out pianist Jean-François (Albert Dupontel), and secretive art collector Jacques (Claude Brasseur), who comes equipped with a pretty girlfriend and a handsome son (Christopher Thompson). Though the tousled Jessica has little in common with these posh Parisians, she affects each of their lives in ways both big and small. Directed by Danièle Thompson (La Bûche) and co-written with her son, Christopher, Avenue Montaigne serves as the flipside to French phenomenon When the Cat's Away, in which a young woman meets the people in her neighborhood while searching for an errant feline. In this case, the surroundings are more upscale, but the residents are just as susceptible to fear and insecurity. Though the idea of a sympathetic look at the upper class will surely strike some as off-putting, Thompson makes it work. The genuine affection she feels for her characters--privileged and underprivileged alike--and the grace with which she keeps several plot strands going at once proves that the spirit of Robert Altman lives on in the most unlikely of places. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

• Actors: Cécile De France, Valérie Lemercier, Albert Dupontel, Laura Morante, Claude Brasseur
• Director: Danièle Thompson
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
• Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language (Original Language): French
• Language (Subtitled): English
• Region Code: 1
• Release Date: 2007-07-17
• Running Time: 101 minutes
• Theatrical Release Date: 2006

Customer Reviews

Reviewed on 2008-06-12 In Paris you will find love! A woman goes to Paris and takes a job just in the right intersection of three different worlds signed by the efervescencent universe of art. An old man who decides to sell all his artistic collection, a succesful actress who would love to perform as Simone de Beauvior in a film next to start and finally a pianist tired of being succesful, who would enjoy to play for single people far from the crowding world. Slow but progressively, she will enter and turn around inside the affective existence of these people and will become a fundamental part in the rest of their lives. A lovable and engrossing romantic comedy that will engage you from start to finish. Don't miss it!

Reviewed on 2008-03-11 French to the Max Avenue Montaigne is one of those movies that might be considered "schmaltzy" by some. Improbable, to be sure; and had it not been set in Paris, it might not have worked for me. But I found it to be a charming, feel good story with actors who carried their roles lightly and well, and with a great sound track.

Reviewed on 2007-11-11 Pleasant time waster Country waif Jessica (Cecile de France) moves to Paris and lands a waitress job that allows her to flit about on the fringes of the art world, where she learns that artists are human just like the rest of us. This film is well-made, well-acted, and completely inconsequential. Recommended for Francophiles.

Reviewed on 2007-10-19 Ingenue glorieuse The female lead is extraordinary, not so much for her acting (which is good) but for her charisma. She's every bit as special as Audrey Hepburn and every bit as good looking. I haven't seen her like in decades. The story line is imaginative...don't the French always manage subtle sophistication in portraying human interaction. There is nothing offensive or vulgar, just a lot of Gallic charm. It's a movie I immediately loaned to my best friend and one you'll be glad to have seen.

Reviewed on 2007-10-05 pleasant if unmemorable French trifle Just how much you'll enjoy "Avenue Montaigne" - a lighter-than-air comic souffle set in a picture-postcard-perfect Paris - may well depend on your level of interest in all things French and continental. Our tour guide for the occasion is a perpetually upbeat, pixie-haired waitress named Jessica who becomes both an observer of - and occasional participant in - the lives of some of the more colorful patrons who frequent the café at which she works. These include two people who produce art and one who consumes it: an unhappy concert pianist who has grown weary of playing music to elite audiences and yearns to rip off his tuxedo and tickle the ivories for the general public; a neurotic actress who is desperate to get off the popular primetime soap opera on which she appears and to land a role in a more "serious" movie (Sydney Pollack plays the American director who may just give her the chance to do that); and a terminally ill art collector who is slowly divesting himself of his massive collection, and who doesn't realize that his new "gold-digging" young girlfriend is, in fact, the former lover of his own semi-estranged son (ah, those French!). The first story cuts the deepest in terms of thematic richness and character development; the second is played mainly for broad laughs, while the third comes across as sketchy and underdeveloped despite the fact that it is the one that most directly involves the central character of the movie. Like many Gallic comedies, "Avenue Montaigne" often seems a bit too impressed with its own preciousness - a trifle too smug in its innate "Frenchness" - to be completely enjoyable. The characters often talk in annoyingly portentous terms about art, philosophy and love, even though they have nothing much new to say about any of those items. Still, the city itself is enchanting, the performers endearing, and the tone so lighthearted and playful that, even though the disparate elements of the story never coalesce into anything particularly meaningful or memorable, the movie goes down as smoothly as a glass of vintage Bordeaux on a moonlit cruise along the Seine.

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