Deborah Francois Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Argentine writer and director Alexis Dos Santos is getting ready to film his second feature. His first was the fest circuit film Glue, which starred Nahuel Pérez Biscayart and Inés Efron, the latter of whom recently stunned audiences with her work in XXY. To give you an idea about what the film was about, and his style, this is the summary from IMDb: "A teenage summer in a small town in the desert, a dysfunctional family, a rock band, a can full of glue, two boys, one girl, loads of tongue kisses, dry heat, wind in Patagonia, existential angst... A teenage story in the middle of nowhere." Keep this in mind.

Variety has released the cast list for his next film, the $2.5 million comedy/drama Unmade Beds. The feature will examine "love, loss, identity, and friendship among young immigrants in London," which sounds pretty serious, but IMDb's outline says that it is the "quirky story of Vera and Axl, who both live in the same London warehouse, but whose [sic] paths never cross until fate steps in." While it, at first, seems like a super-serious immigrant drama, all the clues point to it being a much lighter take on the subject. Belgium actress Déborah François (L'Enfant) and Spanish actor Fernando Tielve (Pan's Labyrinth) will star as Vera and Axl, and they will be joined by Michiel Huisman (Black Book), Iddo Goldberg (Run, Fat Boy, Run), and Richard Lintern (Syriana). The film is set to shoot in London and Nottingham, but there's no word on when.

Here is a revenge movie so unlikely, so over-the-top, that Quentin Tarantino would probably eat it up, despite the fact that it's also polite and low-key to a fault. An import from Belgium, The Page Turner is about a cold-eyed little girl who dreams of escaping the low-class existence of her butcher parents. She has talent as a pianist, and screws up the courage to sit for a Conservatory entrance exam, but is horrified when she's interrupted halfway through her audition thanks to the carelessness of a female judge. Her audition ruined, her one dream shattered, she sets about forming a ten-year plan to ruin that judge's life -- no, I'm not kidding. It's even more head-spinning when you consider that in order for the plan to work, the ten year-old has to count on growing into an incredibly attractive twenty year-old. Adult Melanie is played by Deborah Francois, (who was Sonia in L' Enfant) as a young woman whose eyes are constantly alight with schemes and wicked thoughts, even as her mouth rarely opens.

As the action begins, twenty year-old Melanie applies for and secures an internship at a business run by the husband (Pascal Greggory) of the female judge (Catherine Frot) who ruined her. When the husband lets it slip to his staff one day that he's in the market for a live-in nanny for his young son, Melanie counts on the fact that he won't turn down her offer to ditch the internship and take the position -- she is, after all, a busty, long-legged blonde. She guesses correctly, and is soon living side by side with her nemesis, and plotting an elaborate way of getting even for that inconsiderate moment all those years ago. There's a strong hint thrown in that Melanie might have tried a much easier way to take revenge -- someone tried to run down the judge with a car at some point before the present-day events, but the film stops short of giving us anything more than a hint on that one, which makes it much funnier when you think about it in retrospect.