
L'Appel de la forêt follows the call of nature, but, as it is always the case with Jean-Claude Rousseau, in the form of an image. At first glance we see a green wall and a door-frame next to it. After a second glance the disturbing aspect of the scene crystallizes: A small, differently colored rectangle draws attention to the fact that a picture has been removed from the left-hand side of the wall, while such a picture can still be seen at the right-hand side of the wall. Then a man (Rousseau himself) enters the scene and puts the painting back into its original spot: It shows a roebuck. What follows is a carousel ride of unusual and amusing images.

L'Appel de la forêt follows the call of nature, but, as it is always the case with Jean-Claude Rousseau, in the form of an image. At first glance we see a green wall and a door-frame next to it. After a second glance the disturbing aspect of the scene crystallizes: A small, differently colored rectangle draws attention to the fact that a picture has been removed from the left-hand side of the wall, while such a picture can still be seen at the right-hand side of the wall. Then a man (Rousseau himself) enters the scene and puts the painting back into its original spot: It shows a roebuck. What follows is a carousel ride of unusual and amusing images.
2008-02-06
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7.2The former famous painter Frenhofer lives quietly with his wife on a countryside residence in the French Provence. When the young artist Nicolas visits him with his girlfriend Marianne, Frenhofer decides to start again the work on a painting he long ago stopped: La Belle Noiseuse. And he wants Marianne as model.
6.2When a radio falls from the sky into the hands of a wide-eyed Tibetan Mastiff, he leaves home to fulfill his dream of becoming a musician, setting into motion a series of completely unexpected events.
7.0The ambitious police officer Cruchot is transferred to St. Tropez. He's struggling with crimes such as persistent nude swimming, but even more with his teenage daughter, who's trying to impress her rich friends by telling them her father was a millionaire and owned a yacht in the harbor.
6.3In the French Riviera in the summer of 1915, Jean Renoir, son of the Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste, returns home to convalesce after being wounded in World War I. At his side is Andrée, a young woman who rejuvenates, enchants, and inspires both father and son.
5.9Compulsive spenders Albert and Bruno are in debt up to their necks. While seeking help from community workers to get their lives back on track, they run into a group of young green activists. Lured by the free beer and snacks rather than by the ideals of eco-activists, Albert and Bruno find themselves joining the movement without much conviction.
6.0Deuce Bigalow is a less than attractive, down on his luck aquarium cleaner. One day he wrecks the house of a gigolo and needs quick money to repair it. The only way he can make it is to become a gigolo himself, taking on an unusual mix of female clients. He encounters a couple of problems, though. He falls in love with one of his unusual clients, and a sleazy police officer is hot on his trail.
7.9A troubled rock star descends into madness in the midst of his physical and social isolation from everyone.
7.4Immediately after their miscarriage, the US diplomat Robert Thorn adopts the newborn Damien without the knowledge of his wife. Yet what he doesn’t know is that their new son is the son of the devil.
6.6While standing in the doorway of the video shop where he works, Bazil is inadvertently shot in the head. Now homeless and jobless, he is taken in by a troupe of misfits who live in a giant mound of trash. There Bazil begins his quest for revenge against the people who produced the gun that shot him.
7.7In a rural French village, an old man and his only remaining relative cast their covetous eyes on an adjoining vacant property. They need its spring water for growing their flowers, and are dismayed to hear that the man who has inherited it is moving in. They block up the spring and watch as their new neighbour tries to keep his crops watered from wells far afield through the hot summer. Though they see his desperate efforts are breaking his health and his wife and daughter's hearts, they think only of getting the water.
5.9A few days before Christmas, traveling entertainer Marc Stevens is stuck at nightfall in a remote wood in the swampy Hautes Fagnes region of Liège when his van breaks down. An odd chap who's looking for a lost dog then leads Marc to a shuttered inn.
7.1A corrupt young man somehow keeps his youthful beauty, but a special painting gradually reveals his inner ugliness to all.
7.6A cynical TV weatherman, along with his idealistic producer and his sardonic cameraman, is sent to report on Groundhog Day in the small town of Punxsutawney, where he finds himself repeating the same day over and over.
6.6A doctor dealing with the aftermath of his son's death tries to help a troubled young man.
6.1Munro, a soldier turned lay preacher, comes to New Zealand to minister to the first British colonists, but he is converted by the powerful chief Maianui to serve a different purpose.
6.6A puppet, newly released from his strings, explores the sinister room in which he finds himself.
7.0Famed but tormented artist Vincent van Gogh spends his final years in Arles, France, painting masterworks of the natural world that surrounds him.
6.1Two 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...