Mystery

The Marquise de Montespan is a scheming adventuress who hopes to become the favoured mistress to King Louis XIV of France to advance her social status. However, she is thwarted by the young Angélique de Fontanges, who is the King’s current favourite. Out of desperation, the Marquise de Montespan engages the services of a professional poisoner, the venomous La Voisin, to render her rival ugly. The potion unfortunately kills the young Angélique, and the royal court is thrown into turmoil…Read More »

Synopsis:

‘After an informer of Algerian origin is killed in Villeneuve, a nondescript little town in northern France, two senior police officers, Esther Lafarge and Sally Marinelli, are sent to investigate. Right from the start, Esther and Sally fail to hit it off with Robert Mendès, the detective who was the dead man’s police contact and whose cack-handed attempts to build bridges with the town’s immigrant community are as subtle as they are effective. Esther’s addiction to casual violence not only assists in her day job, it also adds spice to her love life, although the cuts and grazes she sustains in her off-duty hours are apt to be misinterpreted. Sally, by contrast, is a timid soul who, despite her admiration for Esther, has an aversion to any kind of physical contact. Read More »

Tamiko works as a live-in maid in a modest ryokan, while her bed-ridden husband, Kanji, slowly deteriorates due to a cerebral disorder. He makes her home life increasingly miserable, but Tamiko keeps up appearances. One day, Kotani, a well-to-do hotel manager visits the ryokan, is struck by Tamiko, and hints that he wants to help her to escape from her current life.Read More »

Based on Shakesphere’s play, Verdi’s opera depicts the devastating effects of jealousy, “…the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds upon”. Believing Otello has promoted the fast-rising Cassio over himself, Iago plots to destroy both Cassio and Otello. Iago convinces the jealous Otello that his beautiful wife Desdemona is unfaithful, and that Cassio is her lover. Jealousy is followed by tragedy, then retribution, “Has Heaven no more thunderbolts?”Read More »

European tourists on holiday in Morocco are threatened by a native sorcerer who predicts five of them will die, one by one, before the full moon.Read More »

In CÉCILE IS DEAD! (1944) Santa Relli (Jour de Fête) plays a young woman named Cécile, who keeps coming to Quai des Orfèvres to see Inspector Maigret about disturbing events in her household. The esteemed detective and his colleagues are annoyed…until Cécile winds up dead. Maigret must crack the mystery in this stylish film noir from director Maurice Tourneur (Lorna Doone).Read More »

Quote:
When an 11-year-old girl is brutally raped and murdered in a quiet French village, a police detective who has forgotten how to feel emotions–because of the death of his own family in some kind of accident–investigates the crime, which turns out to ask more questions than it answers.Read More »

Storyline:
In the autumn of 1991 Croatia is fighting for independence and the capital Zagreb is plagued by air raid alerts and blackouts. Hela Martinic is a reporter, who returns to her home town from Australia, called by her old friend Vera Kralj. Soon after arrival, she is told her friend was killed in a traffic accident. At the funeral she meets some people who Vera was involved with in some sinister activities and she begins her own investigation…Read More »

Fifteen years after WWII, a group of ex-resistance fighters are brought together by Marie-Octobre, so that the former members of the network can finally relive one fateful night and find out who betrayed their murdered leader, Castille.Read More »