Variations

Alain is getting older. For years he has been filming his daily life: his partner Françoise, the people he meets, nature and animals, and life in all its splendour and cruelty. Having devoted his entire life to filmmaking, with the camera as an extension of his arm, he has observed the world with a poetic sense of authenticity and simplicity. Otherness, the approach of death, the power of life and the importance of others intertwine as he looks back on his life as a filmmaker and as a man, concealing nothing, and offering a vision of the universality of the human experience.

"These portraits are encounters I wanted to be kept from oblivion, even if it is only while you are watching them. They are women who work, who have children, and who, at the same time, keep their independence of mind. I shot 24 portraits of 13 minutes each. I have chosen this short running time for several reasons: not becoming a bother, escape tv adds cuts, shoot the movie quickly, in one pace and without too many scratches. I am not a documentaries maker. I am more like a faces, hands and things lover. To show reality is not my goal. “Reality” is just a word, just like its twin sister “fiction”, which I practice as well, but with a different delight." (Alain Cavalier)

Léon : This morning, Léon the shoe-repairer puts up a sign in his store that he's managed for forty-six years : "Closing down in two months." Panic sets in among the neighborhood inhabitants, who adore this big-hearted Armenian with an amazing face. Is there some way to make stay longer ? Guillaume : Four o'clock in the morning, Guillaume arrives at work first, ahead of his team. At the end of the day, he will have sold all his cakes and bread, that's how good they are. In the evening, he and his wife Jasmine dream of buying a bigger and better located pastry store.

A self-assured businessman murders his employer, husband of his mistress, which unintentionally provokes an ill-fated chain of events.

"In this film you will see a woman's handkerchief tied around a man's wrist, a well-shaven pig's head, some adolescents who are more inventive than their elders in struggling against oppression... You will not, however, hear any dialog. Words do not prepare, do not accompany, do not comment upon the action. This is not a silent film, but a film in which the only moment of life retained for the cinematographic spectacle are those where people do not speak. The spectator will find, perhaps, a greater freedom of interpretation in it and, we hope, a particular pleasure in this." (Alain Cavalier)

In the countryside near Normandy's beaches lives Marie, unhappy. It's 1945, she's married to Jérôme, a somewhat fussy milquetoast, diffident to the war around him and unwilling to move his wife to Paris, where she longs to live, shop, and party. A German outfit is bivouacked at Jérôme and Marie's crumbling château because its commanding officer is pursuing Marie. She's also eyed by a French spy working with the Allies as they plan D-Day. He woos her (posing to the Germans as her brother) and, in his passion, forgets his mission. Heroics come from an unexpected direction, and Marie makes her choice.

“I have on occasion experienced filmmaking as an intensely shared activity. Lively friendships result and remain. Filming that affection today is no act of nostalgia. Paths once crossed make things simple. People who have been behind the camera, or in front of it, giving the movie their all, are without illusion.” (Alain Cavalier)

René, a children's theater performer, has a problem : he is a hearty eater and he weighs no less than 155 kilos. After being abandoned by his girlfriend, René decides to go on a diet, notably to reconquer her. It is also an opportunity for him to question his former lifestyle and to define new values...

Over the course of one night, a gang of twelve criminals carry out a commando-like raid on a small town.

A man walks a length of railroad track, looking for his elderly mother whom he believes fell from the train at some point. He brings his daughter along.

The charismatic, surly son of a wealthy industrialist, Clément, leads a double life as a member of a right-wing extremist organization. When he’s ratted out after a failed assassination attempt on a prominent politician, Clément and his long-suffering wife Anne flee Paris to the idyllic country home of his childhood friend, pacifist print-maker Paul. As affection blossoms between Paul and Anne, the emotional, as well as political tensions, soar and eventually explode.

From his diary, filmed over ten years, filmmaker Alain Cavalier invites us to a meditation on old age, weakness and death. Made of moments of life, fragments of images, this film composes a mosaic where the spectator is invited to also find his place by himself...

In this drama that alludes to the Algerian War with France of the 1960s, Thomas is a deserter from the French Foreign Legion who is on the run from authorities. He helps damsel in distress Dominique, who has been taken hostage by a group of terrorists. Thomas is wounded but manages to escape after killing the guard who inflicted the injury. Dominique gives Thomas money to escape to France after he secures her freedom, but he is caught between the Foreign Legion and the terrorists seeking revenge.

A shallow, provincial wife finds her relationship with her preoccupied husband strained by romantic notions, leading her further towards Paris and the country wilderness.

In a film as moving as a confession, the filmmaker portrays a veritable journey into the valley of the shadows to find Irène, his Eurydice.

When a young auto salesman is forced to give up a vacation with his wife in order to drive a big American car to its new owner who lives on the Riviera, he makes the best of things. First, he gets and old friend to ride along with him. Then, the two of them are joined by another pair of men who want to ride south.