Drama

The pastor of a mountain village adopts a small blind girl, Gertrude. As Gertrude grows up into an attractive young woman the pastor, now middle-aged, realises that he is in love with her. To his chagrin, his adopted son, Jean, is also in love with Gertrude, even though he is shortly to be married to another woman. Jean’s fiancée is jealous of Gertrude and arranges for her to see a doctor in the hope that she might be cured and to enable Jean to choose equally between the two women. Miraculously, Gertrude’s sight is restored and she returns to the village a changed woman. Unable to accept Jean’s love and disappointed by the pastor’s affections for her, she realises that her former happiness has been lost forever. (Films de France)Read More »

A couple, Tamara and Alon meet each other in a hotel suite for a day full of fantasy, they are celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary and this is their routine celebration. But this year is different. Through this day secrets, lies, will be coming out while they are both living their sexual fantasy. As they go along through the revelation of secrets, infidelities and untold desires the experience becomes more and more painful for both of them.Read More »

NYT – Janet Maslin
THE great historical pageant that is Ettore Scola’s ”La Nuit de Varennes” unfolds with supreme ease. It begins with a series of casual coincidences and weaves them brilliantly into a vision of one of the most important moments in French history, a vision not the least bit limited by the specifics of its place and time.

The time is the French Revolution, and the occasion is the flight of the royal family from Paris to the small town of Varennes, where they will be captured and sent back to their deaths. But the feeling is utterly modern, or perhaps it’s timeless. The key issues of the film are the issues of any era. And the humor and generosity with which Mr. Scola presents them are correspondingly enduring.Read More »

Ogin is a concubine of a powerful feudal lord (Tayu). The evil woman Ogin tries to gain power by killing all the people who disturb her.Read More »

Synopsis
Ida and her mother, a single woman, live in Northern Norway during the Nazi occupation. Ida’s mother works as a cook at a POW camp for Russians captured during the fighting in the Arctic. But she is more involved with the Germans than that… The occupying troops were reputedly encouraged to have relations with local women in Norway (as the racial characteristics of Nordic people were favoured by Nazi ideology…) As a result, lots of Norwegian women got involved in relationships and many children were conceived.Read More »

Quote:
In the 19th century Edo period, sisters Oshizu and Otaka have sacrificed their personal happiness to work and care for their ailing father. Otaka falls in love, but can’t accept a marriage proposal since her older sister needs to marry first. When Oshizu learns of this decision, she takes matters in her own hands.Read More »

Back in his village, former war prisoner Bruno Baldi is dead set on avenging his brother who has been shot by a German firing squad after being given away by a villager. But nobody wants to give him the name of the culprit. At long last, Antonio, a joiner, reveals the informer but this comes at a cost.Read More »

From ce-review.org
Menzel could not work in films for some time after Skřivánci na niti. It was a period when he had to decide if he would accept the rules dictated by the regime or leave his profession yet keep his “artistic freedom.” This difficult situation was also faced by other members of the Czech New Wave. Miloš Forman, Jan Němec and Ivan Passer decided to emigrate, while Věra Chytilová and Evald Schorm stayed in Czechoslovakia even though they could not work as film directors (Chytilová for seven years, Schorm for 17 years).Read More »

The Yagyu family’s elder son sends an old and cheap looking pot to his young brother, ignoring that the pot contains a map showing where it was hidden a treasure of a million ryo. He tries to recover it but his brother’s wife has sold it to some junk dealers. Finally the pot ends up in Yasu’s hands, a kid whose father was killed although Tange Sazen was supposed to protect him from in his way to home, so Tange Sazen will look after Yasu.Read More »