Jean Panisse

Henri Verneuil was born Achod Malakian of Armenian parentage on October 15, 1920, in Rodosto, Turkey, and his family fled to France and settled in Marseilles when he was a young child. He later recounted his childhood experience in the novel Mayrig, which he dedicated to his mother and made into this 1991 film with the same name.

The Italians have bocce ball, and the French have a similar game, boules. This is played (generally in the southern part of the country) with steel balls on a packed-earth court. While these games have a bucolic, countrified and even genteel air about them, competition and betting are fierce. In this sports/crime thriller, a young man whose father was killed for violating the unspoken roles of the game in professional competition trains with his grandfather to become a champion boules player just like his father.

A married woman, Anne Lambert has a child with her lover. But her lover becomes afraid and refuses to recognize the baby. Very invested in her career, Anne, an architect, decides to raise her child alone.

Chronic serial womanizer Stephane Margelle drops his wife Sophie off at the airport so she can go away for Easter weekend. He immediately picks up beautiful young Julie, who has just had a fight with her married boyfriend. He gets her back to his apartment and is preparing for a sexy weekend, when his wife suddenly returns home. He makes up a bizarre, on-the-spot, spur-of-the-moment story that the gorgeous girl is actually his long-lost daughter. Julie plays along, but this leads to a whole series of increasingly ridiculous lies and comical situations (such as when her real mother shows up).

Cruchot's police office moves into a new building. They do not only get high tech equipment, but also four young female police officers to educate. All of them scramble to work with them -- and cause pure chaos while being distracted by the fine ladies. Then they get into real trouble when one after the other of their female colleagues is kidnapped.

When a real-estate promoter attempts to take over the homes of two electronics whizzes and boot them out, they contrive ingenious ways to inconvenience and harass him. By pooling their knowledge, they are able to pull off a crucial robbery using a very special box of chocolates.

An old and poor couple, Charles and Lucie, scrape by working as a concierge and an untalented antique dealer, respectively. But one day, their dreary daily routine is disrupted by the surprising news that they have inherited a luxurious house in the South of France.

The sweet elderly aunt and her two nieces survive the vendetta killing of their whole family because they are out picking flowers at the time. Undaunted, the aunt, a tough old Corsican, tracks down and kills all but one of the men who wiped out her kinfolk.

A group of pensioners, exasperated by the Social Security strike, meet Chalupot, a former paratrooper and ex-priest who has just been released from prison. He encouraged them to form the M.L.V. (Mouvement de Libération des Vieillards) and organize demonstrations. But as Chalupot is arrested and locked up, the pensioners plan to hold up the Social Security.

A committed filmmaker struggles to complete his latest project while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.