The Emmanuelle Beart Collection (A Heart In Winter / The Story Of Marie and Julien / Nathalie)

• Three of Csar Award-winning French actress Emmanuelle Barts films are highlighted in this special 3 DVD set featuring Nathalie, The Story of Marie and Julien, & Un Coeur en Hiver. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: FOREIGN Rating: NR Age: 741952312093 UPC: 741952312093 Manufacturer No: KLF-DV3120

La Belle Noiseuse is a thrilling and unconventional drama about the responsibility of an artist to his vision and the conflicts that arise when such responsibility is perceived as a threat to others. Michel Piccoli (Le Doulos) delivers one of his finest, most lived-in performances as Edouard Frenhofer, a famous painter living with his artist wife Liz (Jane Birkin) on a spacious estate in the French countryside. Frenhofer has lacked inspiration for a decade and has given up on painting. The idea behind his unfinished masterpiece, La Belle Noiseuse ("The Beautiful Troublemaker"), has be! en seemingly unattainable for a decade; Liz was the original model for it, and Frenhofer's exhaustion with the project has an emotional parallel to his dispassionate relationship with her.

Along comes a rising artist, Nicolas (David Bursztein), who suggests that his girlfriend, Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart), a writer, could help Frenhofer jumpstart the painting's completion. From this point, most of La Belle Noiseuse becomes a remarkable, seemingly unedited and privileged look at the development of a bond between artist and muse. Béart, fiercely brilliant, spends the majority of the film nude and continually molded into sometimes-painful positions as Frenhofer struggles--sketch after sketch, paint upon paint--to find something beyond the obviousness of Marianne's body. As the two struggle to meet each other halfway, Liz and Nicolas feel marginalized and jealous, putting pressure on Frenhofer to disregard such personal concerns or give in to them. Adapted by Fren! ch New Wave master Jacques Rivette from a story by Honore de B! alzac, t he lengthy La Belle Noiseuse is fascinated by the artistic process; it is itself a patient process of watching ideas and aesthetic courage reveal themselves in the face of extraneous aversion. --Tom KeoghDisc 1 Side A: **Widescreen Feature Film - Jean de Florette

Disc 2: **Widescreen Feature Film - Manon of the SpringDVD extras include: 16x9 anamorphic, 5.1 sound, interviews with Andre Techine, Gaspard Ulliel & Gilles Perrault, subtitle control, storyboards, photo gallery. Set in 1940 at the beginning of France's occupation by the Germans, Strayed stars French film icon Emmanuelle Béart (Nathalie, 8 Women) as Odile, a young and beautiful widow fleeing Paris with her two children. When German planes bomb the road filled with refugees, Odile's car is destroyed and the three must escape into the woods. There they encounter Yvan (sexy newcomer Gaspard Ulliel - Brotherhood of the Wolf), a 17 year-old illiterate delinquent whose survival skills and charm soo! n prove indispensable. They soon take shelter in an abandoned house and become a makeshift family. Odile, at once suspicious of and attracted to the mysterious stranger, soon finds herself at the center of a fascinating set of personal and sexual dynamics. One of the most respected filmmakers in France, André Téchiné (Wild Reeds, Rendez-Vous) once again, builds on his reputation as one of the most sensitive and intelligent filmmakers working today.Emmanuelle Béart gives another beautiful performance in this fable-like story of World War II. She plays a widow with two children in tow; escaping from Paris, their car is bombed in the countryside and they stagger into the woods along with a rough, savvy teenage boy (the feral Gaspard Ulliel). Their idyll in an abandoned chateau takes up the remainder of the film, as various tensions simmer within this ad hoc family unit. Director Andre Techine (Wild Reeds, Scene of the Crime) is a master of the small, telli! ng moment and the frailty of people in a natural landscape. He! also pr oves, in the riveting sequence of Germans attacking the line of refugees, that he could probably make a great action film if he cared to. Along with Béart's sensuality, his treatment of hushed interiors and sympathy for the imagination of children creates an intimate arena for these lost souls. --Robert HortonThree of César Awardwinning French actress Emmanuelle Béart’s films are highlighted in this special 3 DVD set featuring Nathalie, The Story of Marie and Julien, & Un Coeur en Hiver.