The Stone Council

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The Stone Council
Le-concile-de-pierre.jpg
Theatrical release poster
French Le Concile de pierre
Directed by Guillaume Nicloux
Written byGuillaume Nicloux
Stéphane Cabel
Produced byYves Marmion
Starring Monica Bellucci
Catherine Deneuve
Elsa Zylberstein
Moritz Bleibtreu
Lorenzo Balducci
Cinematography Peter Suschitzky
Edited byGuy Lecorne
Music by Éric Demarsan
Distributed by UGC
Release date
  • 16 November 2006 (2006-11-16)
Running time
102 minutes
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
Budget
  • €20 million [1]
  • (US$28 million) [2]
Box office$2.5 million [3]

The Stone Council (French : Le Concile de pierre) is a 2006 French thriller film. [4] Based on a novel by Jean-Christophe Grangé the film depicts an inter-continental, mystical conspiracy unfolding following the adoption of a boy from Mongolia.

Contents

Plot

Bellucci plays Diane Siprien, a translator, who adopts a Mongolian child name Liu-San with the help of her friend Sybille. Years later, a bruise appears on the boy's chest, and the two women suffer nightmares. Diane is dispatched on assignment, and Liu goes comatose while in Sybille's temporary care. He begins speaking in an unknown tongue. As Diane tries to place the language, mysterious murders began occurring in her orbit. She discovers the boy comes from an ancient, mystic Mongolian tribe — the Tseven — who want the boy returned to them for a religious prophecy involving the Council of the Stone. [4]

Reception

Variety called the film a "French Sixth Sense", and a "generously budgeted piece of esoterica" that "won't be enough to scare up an audience, unless it's a very young one that hasn't heard all these cliches before." [5] Screen Daily similarly found an American parallel, the Da Vinci Code, and called the film "overwrought". [2]

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References

  1. Lemercier, Fabien (23 September 2005). ""Turn over" for Le Concile de Pierre". Cineuropa .
  2. 1 2 Marshall, Lee (17 October 2006). "The Stone Council (Le Concile De Pierre)". Screen Daily.
  3. "The Stone Council". Box Office Mojo.
  4. 1 2 "The Stone Council (Le concile de pierre)". Cineuropa.
  5. Young, Deborah (19 October 2006). "The Stone Council". Variety .