Plot summary:
Frank, a vagabond, arrives at a service station on a mountain road near to Marseilles. The kindly old owner, Nick, offers him a job which he accepts. Frank is instantly attracted to Nick’s young wife, Cora, and they have a passionate affair. The two lovers plan to kill Nick so that they can profit from his life insurance. Having made Nick’s death look like an accident, they are acquitted of his murder. However, fate has a cruel twist in store…Read More »
Premiered in Cannes (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs) in 2011
Synopsis
Blue Bird is a story about how one day in a child’s life can change its world. One morning, Bafiokadié and his sister Téné, two African children, leave their village. The only thing on their mind is to find their lost blue bird before the day is over. But they will find much more along their way.Read More »
Synopsis by Sandra Brennan
In this drama, a single woman approaching 40 grows bored of her affair with a married trucker and writes to a singles column. She ends up paired with an outwardly conservative bookstore clerk. During their date, he drinks and soon turns into a rude, crude, drunken slob. She is mortified until he apologizes. She forgives him and they have sex. In the morning they resume their former lives. Perhaps they will meet again. Perhaps not.Read More »
Synopsis:
Bosnian-born filmmaker Emir Kusturica made this farce, set in a Gypsy settlement along the banks of the Danube, where three generations of characters burst forth in manic and frenetic displays of charm, confusion, and chaos.
Garbage dump godfather Grga Pitic (Sabri Sulejman) and cement czar Zarije Destanov (Zabit Memedov), both in their 80s, remain friends even though they haven’t seen each other in 25 years. Zarije’s son Matko Destanov (Bajram Severdzan) goes to Grga for a loan. Matko is double-crossed by his partner, gypsy gangster Dadan Karambolo (Srdan Todorovic), who demands that Matko’s son, Zare Destanov (Florijan Ajdini), marry Dadan’s small sister, Afrodita (Salija Ibraimova).Read More »
Quote:
Fiona is a crack-smoking prostitute. She lives a reckless life outside the law where she kills three cops with the same nonchalance with which she turns tricks… Gritty and unsparing, the film blends an original screenplay with actual documentary footage shot in a Lower East Side crack-house with prostitutes playing some of the key roles. The tender relationship between these women is felt without descending into voyeurism or pity and depicted with an authenticity that transcends the line between fiction and documentary.Read More »
Dennis Potter’s most controversial work by a country mile, BRIMSTONE AND TREACLE was a BBC Play For Today production that tackled an almost unthinkable subject. A bickering, middle-aged couple with a brain-damaged daughter (Pattie) are visited one typically fraught evening by an overbearingly polite young man named Martin, who claims to be a friend of Pattie’s. The mother is thoroughly charmed by the stranger, the father is less convinced, but – in desperate need of some respite from the round-the-clock attention their daughter requires – they allow Martin to stay with them anyway. Trouble is, Martin is an extremely disturbed individual who either is – or believes himself to be – the Devil incarnate, and takes to raping Pattie when her parents aren’t at home.Read More »
“The Earth Is a Sinful Song” is the somewhat misleadingly lyrical title of this film. It is based on a novel set in Finnish Lapland in 1947-48 and concerns itself, in unusually intimate detail, with the lives of the inhabitants of a small, rustic community, and with particular emphasis on one family—an old man, his unhappy son, haggard daughter-in-law and teen-age granddaughter.
One is tempted to call these lives harsh and brutal. But that would be an urban judgment, passed upon people who exist so close to nature that the appearance of an automobile about midway through the film jars a viewer. No, these lives are simply different, stripped almost bare of what we like to call the amenities of civilization. They have no luxuries. Hardship is omnipresent. Death comes among them frequently, taking people and animals. Pleasures are simple—an outdoor dance (where a drifter is killed); drink; religion; the sauna; and sex, indulged in and depicted with a minimum of fuss.
The seasons pass. Lives change. People grow up, grow older, die, are killed, are born. The cycle is ancient and eternal; the landscape is literal paradise and figurative hell. — (The New York Times).Read More »
Synopsis:
‘Linen maid Marie is surprised when one of her neighbours, an impoverished artist named Claude, wishes her “good luck” one day. When a client gives her a present, Marie is convinced that Claude’s salutation will indeed bring her good luck, so she goes and buys a lottery ticket. She immediately tells Claude that if she wins, she will share her winnings with him. Naturally, Marie wins the jackpot but Claude is reluctant to take his share. He agrees only when Marie accepts his proposal that they spend twelve days together, living the high life on Claude’s winnings. Although she is engaged to be married, Marie accepts, and they set off on the holiday of a lifetime…’
– Films de FranceRead More »
Quote:
Filmmaker C.S. Leigh writes and directs his first feature film with the extreme drama The Process. French actress Béatrice Dalle plays an actress trying to kill herself. Through long, uncomfortable takes, the film explores her tortured existence. After a disastrous on-stage appearance with her estranged husband (Guillaume Depardieu), she engages in a rough sexual three-way with two men (Daniel Duval and Sebastien Viala). She also loses her child to a car accident and her breast to cancer. The Process was screened at the Berlin Film Festival in 2004 with live musical accompaniment by John Cale. Read More »