Dominique Lavanant

55 years ago, on October 1 1968, the first brand advertising spot appeared on the French television screen. Over the next three decades, thousands of creative little films would seduce and build our collective memory. Kitschy or cult spots, humor, slogans, music, stars, gimmicks, grand spectacle or sex appeal: during its golden age, how did advertising convince? Thierry Ardisson has brought together almost 400 advertising clips to relive the era of the conquest of minds and wallets.

Paulette lives alone in a housing project in the Paris suburbs. With her meager pension, she can no longer make ends meet.

It's the end of the school year. The long-awaited moment of the holidays is arrive. The little Nicolas, her parents and Grandma take the road towards the sea, and settle in for some time at the Hotel Beau-Rivage.

John - conscientious and romantic - and Michael - thoughtless and unfaithful - are surgeons at their father’s private hospital. John felt madly in love with Priscilla, a wonderful nurse. But he is betrayed by Michael who decides to marry her. Shattered by his loss, John moves to Canada. But Michael’s new project to dedicate the clinic to plastic surgery leads them to bankruptcy, forcing John to come back in the hope of saving the clinic...

The wedding of Vincent and Berenger does not begin well. For starters, the fabulous cake for the reception falls apart as the butler of the château, and one of the caterers is taking down a flight of stairs falls. The cream puffs are carefully picked up from the floor an arranged as though nothing happened. The bride comes from a bourgeois family, presided by Maddie, an old lady with a secret in her heart. The wedding, to be performed at the local church, by father Victor, proves to be not the classic marriage that has been planned...

The story of a septuagenarian, recently divorced, which in its reconstruction desire and quest for a new companion will rediscover the small pleasures of life and the art of seduction.

No synopsis available yet.

Marie Hersant, a police captain, arrives on Ouessant, the island where she grew up, to investigate the disturbing disappearance of her childhood friend Sandrine. This is an opportunity for Marie, who is five months pregnant, to reconnect with her mother, Gaëlle. But soon Sandrine's body is washed up by the sea as a storm breaks out, cutting off all connection with the mainland...

After the Club Med and skiing, what happened to the Bronzés 27 years later? Early response: the same, and worse.

In the 1980 French countryside, farmer Jojo and his ill-tempered wife Lulu hate each other, though their respective interests speak against divorce. The only thing that keeps the oppressed Jojo from murder is the threat of the guillotine...

Agathe Clery, a marketing manager for a cosmetics company, is snobbish, stubborn and racist. When she is diagnosed with Addison Syndrome, an disorder that darkens the pigmentation of one's skin, she suddenly finds herself resembling a black woman.

In Brussels, one discovers the bodies of young women buried behind the tombs of famous painters… In each of them, it lacks the right forearm. Yarn needles, Commissioner Leon, whose secret passion is knitting, unravels the intrigue of this dark history, with the heart of this case Mrs. Edward Island, transvestite housekeeper bistro "In Sudden Death," where one encounters a high wildlife colors.

A vicious serial sex killer is on the loose, and landscape gardener and shop-window outfitter Loris is the prime suspect, thanks to his unfortunate habit of getting caught in compromising situations (for which there is always a totally innocent explanation that the police fail to spot). Undercover policewoman Jessica is assigned by eccentric police psychologist Taccone to follow Loris.

Stressed and overworked, famous French movie star Michel Blanc is beginning to wear down, physically and mentally, from the pressure and demands of fame. Already in a fragile state of mind, strange events start to transpire all around him, and he gradually loses his grip. Taking the advice of a psychiatrist, Blanc retreats to the countryside with his friend Carole Bouquet, but Blanc still has not managed to escape all of his problems.

Désiré is a fine servant and butler who regularly seduces the ladies of the house where he works, but then he moves on. This time he is working for Odette, the mistress of the minister of Posts and he is living a new situation. He has fallen in love with with Odette.

This series of sketches introduces doctor Apfelglück and four of his patients... and their rather peculiar and disturbing problems.

Young Martin has been acting strange. At his school, his teacher and classmates notice that he is less talkative and more withdrawn. When those around him begin to prod, they discover that Martin’s single mother has died. Fearful that he will be sent away from home now that he has no parents, Martin looks to his friends for help. With Jerome leading the charge to save Martin from the orphanage, the first thing they decide to do is dispose of the mother’s body.

A man comes to a small town in France and witness the apparent murder of a woman pharmacist. He teams up with the victim's vulgar assistant to try to solve the mystery.

A thirteen-year-old French girl deals with moving to a new city and school in Paris, while at the same time her parents are getting a divorce.

Grégoire Lecomte, the unlucky actor anxious to find a "real job", goes to take a screen test for a role of a killer, but gets to mafiosi by mistake. He takes their don for a producer, and they mistake him for a hitman with whom they had an appointment. Deluded Lecomte signs contract with them. He is supposed to kill gun dealer Otto Krampe at his birthday party in Saint-Tropez by piercing him with a cap of the umbrella with a built-in syringe with potassium cyanide. Lecomte is not aware that it has to be a real murder.

Nina is a young, carefree actress who arrives in Paris searching for her big break. There, she finds drama both on- and offstage as she becomes involved with three men: a mild-mannered real-estate agent who offers her stability, a bad-boy actor who lives dangerously on the edge, and an intense theater director who casts her in a production of “Romeo and Juliet.” As opening night approaches, the emotional extremes of Nina’s love life fuel her art.

Three young men - Jacques, Pierre, and Michel - share an apartment in Paris, and have many girlfriends and parties. Once, during a party, a friend of Jacques' tells him he has a quite compromising package to deliver, and asks him if he can leave it discreetly at their place. Jacques agrees and, as he works as a steward, flies away for a one-month trip in Japan, telling Pierre and Michel about the package. Then, one of Jacques' former girlfriends drops a baby before their door, making Pierre and Michel believing it is the package they are waiting for. Their lives are then completely changed.

A detective, fresh out of the academy (lowest mark in class), gets the assignment to bodyguard a spoiled rich girl reporter. She's been interviewed on TV and has questioned the virility of a mobster who kidnaps her later.

Helene, a pill-addicted anesthesiologist, is mourning the death of her boyfriend when, through a car accident she causes, she chances to meet the lethargic Gilles, a young man who lives for free at his mother's hotel. Gilles pursues Helene romantically, and she eventually softens up. Gilles, however, is also devoted to Bernard, a petty crook who revels in mugging gay men. All three struggle with relationships that seem to be going nowhere.

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.

After he is dismissed from his umpteenth job, Momo is kicked out of the family home by his fed-up father. He immediately joins his buddy Manu, who is also penniless having just lost his job at a cafeteria. The two decide to ask shady nightclub owner Sammy for a job, and he promptly hires them to transport back two statuettes from Amsterdam. Momo and Manu soon find out that these art objects are stuffed with drugs, but still manage to carry out their mission. They receive one kilo of grass in exchange, which they sell immediately. But while the business is lucrative, they discover that it's not so easy to become a full-fledged drug dealer...

A young journalist comes from Nice to Paris to meet with the famous judge, Simon, hoping he will help her understand a case. She does not know that, according to the will of fate, in the office of judge was fugitive criminal. The couple hit the road.

When the mother of a "tribe" of five children leaves for good, their inept father is not sure how to keep the family clothed and fed, and without the help of his neighbor Simone, he would be nowhere. She is attracted to him but eventually gives up on the relationship. Meanwhile, the father grabs his brood and they take off for Paris in search of the wife. But Simone accidentally ends up on the same train...

Focuses primarily on three women and the (unseen) man who goes in and out of their lives. One member of this trio is a saleswoman with an open relationship that suddenly closes when she learns that her lover has been unfaithful. It seems that he has dallied with a book-dealer (her nemesis) who ultimately does not propose as much of a threat to the disillusioned saleswoman as a certain actress. Along with these three are several other females who interact with the main protagonists. Set up more in the manner of a stage play with changing scenes and acts.

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!

A disgruntled scientist is fired from his job; slipping into madness, he invents a machine which harnesses the airwaves and can shoot people through the TV screen.

After being discharged from a mental institution, a man is tasked by his mother to revive a struggling supermarket in Limoges. He must navigate unexpected responsibilities and the challenges of managing the store's staff.

Amanda Weber is a museum employee. Her nephew, Victorien, who feels that wild animals should not be kept in zoos, while hitchhiking saw a mysterious bus with 50 dead tourists that later was found by autorities at the bottom of a lake. When Victorien gets in very serious problems due to what he saw Amanda seeks to find out what happened and soon also becomes a target.

A former secret agent, who retired and wrote a first novel which tells the eventful adventures of his hero "Le Léopard ", comes back to work, reluctantly helped by an old maid.

A Hollywood studio is producing another spectacular when the top billed male stars suddenly show up as corpses, killed before the critics could ever put pen to paper. Under suspicion is a talent agent. Is he guilty or not? These macabre events have everyone off their feed, from the producers down to the lowest gofer.

Lydie, a physically unattractive young woman, is brutally dumped by her fiancé when she had just acquired the lease of an apartment to live with him.

In 1942 in occupied France, a Jewish refugee marries a soldier to escape deportation to Germany. Meanwhile a wealthy art student loses her first husband to a stray Resistance bullet; at the Liberation she meets an actor, gets pregnant, and marries him. Lena and Madeleine meet at their children's school in Lyon in 1952 and the intensity of their relationship strains both their marriages to the breaking point.

An official's earlier rise to power had some sordid aspects that are about to be uncovered by the death of his uncle. While he is trying to contain any potential scandal, the man becomes enamored of the daughter of his uncle's maid. This new romance inspires him to forget worries about a public image and focus on a new life -- not any easy objective when unsavory friends and foes have their own agendas in mind.

In early twentieth-century Brittany, two peasants marry, have a son, and live in traditional Breton ways: three generations under one roof, a division of labor between the sexes, elders' stories at night, politics and religion during their little free time. Times are hard: la Chienne du Monde drives some to suicide; Ankou (death) is close at hand. Pierre is born into this republican family, his lyric childhood interrupted by the outbreak of war and his father's conscription. He learns his catechism and, as a child of a Reds, also reveres school. His grandfather and father often put him on their shoulders, giving him a ride on the horse of pride.

When Peter, Margaux's American writer husband, leaves Paris in a funk and heads home, she finds herself the single parent of two near teens. She also gets a new assignment at work: to find, sign, and promote new rock singers. She discovers a duo, Jeremy and Michel, and jump-starts their music careers. Jeremy is attracted to the older Margaux, asserts himself with her, befriends her children, and neglects Michel and their music. The kids go to New York to be with their father Peter, freeing Margaux to respond to Jeremy. Does that relationship have any future? And what of the musical duo?

Princess Charlotte is scheduled to marry a boring duke, but before that event happens, Paul has taken a bet that he can seduce her. He does, profits from his act, and then falls in love with her. Meanwhile, the wedding with the duke is still planned, and it remains to be seen whether Paul will give in and give up.

Denis and Rachid, a black and an Algerian, are looking for an apartment in Paris. Both meet Virginie, whocould rent them the vacant apartment of her stepfather, but she'd rather rent to some low-lifes than to a black or an Algerian.

A woman leaves her husband and marries another man without divorcing the first.

A wrestler and a bookseller disgraced by life fall in love with each other.

Holidaymakers arriving in a Club Med camp on the Ivory Coast are determined to forget their everyday problems and emotional disappointments. Games, competitions, outings, bathing and sunburn accompany a continual succession of casual affairs.

Two men, fortyish, worn out by their wives, abandon everything to go and live in the back of beyond. There they meet a truculent priest, a boozer, Émile who recalls them to life's simple pleasures. Calm is what they want. But soon their example inspires thousands of disorientated males...

Four guys working for a small grocer in trouble, declare war on a new giant neighborhood supermarket by attempting several coups. A film about the big store taking over the business of smaller stores.

In this sequel to Les Bronzes (1978) summer has passed, but that doesn't mean the fun has to end for Bernard, Nathalie, Gigi, Jerome, Popeye, Jean-Claude, and Christiane.

Intellectually precocious teenager Lauren King lives in Paris with her somewhat ditzy mother. On a movie set, she strikes up a friendship with teenage film buff Daniel Michon. After Lauren's mother forbids her to date the outspoken Daniel, the young lovebirds team up with eccentric pickpocket Julius to run away to Venice, where, according to legend, a couple who kiss under the Bridge of Sighs will stay together forever.

On a stopover in Barcelona, Fériaud Roland discovers a corpse in the hotel room next door. He wakes up in a strange clinic without remembering who brought him there. The doctor insists he hallucinated, but it's not long before he obtains evidence that it wasn't a dream.

At forty years old, Martin Belhomme leads a quiet life with his wife and two children. One day, he falls hopelessly in love with Eva, a cabaret singer. He decides to follow her to Amsterdam. From then on, his life becomes very eventful!

Henri Serin (Jean-Pierre Marielle), an umbrella salesman, leads a quiet life between his work, his family and his passion for painting. During his many business trips, Henri indulges in a few amorous escapades, which provide a welcome change from the tiresome daily routine his bigoted wife locks him into. One fine day, Henri decides to drop everything and live on love and fresh water. He ends up in Pont-Aven, where he meets Émile, a local painter imitating Gauguin, with whom he shares his drinking and other feminine attractions.

The story of a big party during which Jacques Tati brings together audience members, performers, clowns, children, and himself.

In the fall of 1963, Anne is becoming a teenager. She lives in Paris with her mother and her older sister, Frédérique. They're just back from summer at the beach with their father. School starts. A turbulent year awaits them both.

Marie, who was orphaned as a young girl, has a case of arrested development that makes her act younger than her age. One day she stops to look in a store window displaying various ornate dolls. Claude, the affluent, eccentric store owner, sees her and becomes infatuated which leads to her and him meeting and deciding to go and take a look at Claude personal doll collection at his house. Marie, unaware of Claude's bizarre obsession with dolls, decides to marry him.

Tired of being a housewife, Annie wants to work. Between her professional life and her responsibilities as a parent, she can no longer cope. She decides to leave and starts writing a memoir of her life...

Martial Perrin is the president of a right-wing political party which is gearing itself up for a forthcoming election. When he learns that a notorious criminal named Kraus has escaped from prison, Perrin panics and goes into hiding. His deputy, Constant, hires Perrin’s cousin, Gilbert, an actor who is a perfect double of Perrin, to replace him. What Gilbert does no know is that the killer Kraus is bumping off the people who were implicated in the affair for which he was arrested, and that Perrin is next on his list.

François Perrin is a journalist who reads the news on RTL radio. Alone in life, his only "amusement" is his neighbor from Africa, who makes mildly fun of him from time to time. One evening, François is bored, and decides to call a random telephone number. He gets Christine on the line, a bit of an old school pharmacist, who hesitates to put down the phone, and plays the game of seduction with the charming "Mr X"...

Whilst King Gros Pif I amuses himself at debauched banquets, his musketeers pursue their tax-collecting duties with a malicious zeal. Goaded by the court jester (who is also the Queen’s lover), the ministers decide to put an end to this regime and have the King locked up. Hearing the news, the famous Chevalier Blanc comes to his rescue. Aided by the knight and his cousin Lucienne, the King flees to Flanders, where he devises a scheme to win him back the throne of France...

Normandy, France, 1976. After 2 years of wild love with Nadia, Pouplard, an unemployed heating engineer working in his girlfriend's butcher shop, decides to marry her and leave his wife and daughter. He'll have to struggle against his own jealousy and Nadia's incredible sex appeal to get through this 'moment de vie'.