Tombés du ciel

Lioret directed his best picture, that won the Silver Seashell and OCIC award in Donostia (San Sebastian). Jean ROCHEFORT is excellent, Ticky HOLGADO is great! Laura del Sol is just correct. The role played by Sotiqui KOUYATÉ is also great! Marisa PAREDES is the only one I don't like. The story of people that live stuck-ed in an airport is really interesting. Spielberg took it and made a stupid picture with Tom HANKS named "The Terminal"; he tried to copy LIORET but failed instantly! This movie is one of my favorites. Fine cast, very good script and an excellent directing. But what happened to that movie? I can't find it in shops, either in internet. It looks like it's been erased from the earth! that's terrible! I think that the only way of getting it is going to France, for buying it. If somebody knows how to purchase it, please, let me know.

Instant classic; 8 out of 10.

I really loved this film which was charming and intriguing. It was a shame it did not achieve wider distribution, and that that terrible Tom Hanks vehicle took the same (English) title. It provided a wonderful insight into the way that people could lose their freedom to determine their own lives, as well as sending up the vagaries of French bureaucracy. Jean Rochefort is a wonderful actor; I would be happy to see him in almost anything but this was an especial joy. It even gave me a perverse yearning to stay in one of those automated French hotels that are guyed at some point. It is several years since I saw this film but a number of vignettes remain clearly in my mind.

I like this film and watched it several times.

In this story, Arturo, the main character(a wealthy Canadian French living in Italy, played by Jean Rochefort) is thrown into a situation where he has only the minimal procession, no money, but only some space to lie down in a room with a kitchen, surrounded by strangers (two men and a woman and a child).

He was on his way back to Italy from Canada, and, having lost his passport, was restricted to the transit zone at the Paris international airport. There, as long as one manage to go out within the facility, you have all the resources (say, wild rabbits for trade with an airport restaurant to earn some cash to go by).

Totally unexpectedly, he experienced true friendships through interactions with these strangers living there for one reason or another, in a span of few days into the New Year's Day.

The story is beautifully crafted (but not overdoing it - beauty of the French film). A brief and adventurous excursion to the city of Paris on the New Year's Eve is very touching thanks to beautiful images and music.

This film is great for the kids as episodes are funny. It is also great for the grownups as it shows What really matters in life is relationships with others.

What I really like about this movie is the way it transcends the border of ordinary drama, entering a mythical region. It tells a sort of a modern fairy tale – a big airport becomes a strange, enchanted castle.

The main character, a man in white socks and without shoes, is detained in the international section of the airport because together with his shoes all his documents were stolen. Unsympathetic officials prevent him from entering the „outer world", he has to remain „en sous-douane". This means, literally translated, in the sub-customs-area, but the way the expression is used it really sounds like a special state of mind and existence in which one ceases to be entirely human and becomes a kind of a ghost. Of course, the movie wants to make it plain, that it can happen to anyone.

The hero meets other people who are in a permanent state of „sous-douane", a little international crowd, a tiny microcosm. They are like some kind of brownies or kobolds who know the airport inside out, passing their time going rabbit hunting between the runways or exploring the entrails of the huge substructure of the airport. The hero gets released from the castle he is forced to haunt, nobody saves the others who remain behind.

Tombés du ciel (fallen from the skies) is a good drama with an excellent international cast and many real airport locations that is not easily forgotten.

After the 9pm news on TV5 they sometimes show a film. Last night they chose "Les Tombees du Ciel" with Jean Rochefort, one of my favourite actors.

Like so many French films, it showed how hard life can be and in the end it just left me with a sense of hope, a feeling of lightness.

Shot almost entirely at Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris, it portrayed the life of the people trapped between states. They really do exist - I've seen them at Sheremetzavo 2 in Moscow.

Films say so much about the society that makes them - often in ways that were never intended by the director. This film just confirmed the reasons I spend so long and I work so hard to learn French.