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When the young Jeanne finds out that she could have mistakenly been exchanged from her cradle with another newborn (the son of a famous piano player), she decides to contact this family. All this will lead to the discovery of dark family secrets and the unveiling of the misdeeds and the hypocrisy of the French upper class members.Read More »
Synopsis:
Con artists Victor (Michel Serrault) and Betty (Isabelle Huppert) are a perfect team when it comes to cheating gamblers out of their winnings. But Betty, who’s a master of the art of seduction, has a bigger scheme in mind: double-crossing bagman Maurice Biagini (François Cluzet) out of millions of Swiss francs that belong to organized crime. While it sounds like an airtight plan, Victor — no fool when it comes to matters of deception — suspects a double cross.Read More »
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On a movie set, in a factory, and at a hotel, Godard explores the nature of work, love and film making. While Solidarity takes on the Polish government, a Polish film director, Jerzy, is stuck in France making a film for TV. He’s over budget and uninspired; the film, called “Passion,” seems static and bloodless. Hanna owns the hotel where the film crew stays. She lives with Michel, who runs a factory where he’s fired Isabelle, a floor worker. Hanna and Isabelle are drawn to Jerzy, hotel maids quit to be movie extras, people ask Jerzy where the story is in his film, women disrobe, extras grope each other off camera, and Jerzy wonders why there must always be a story.Read More »
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1938, in a French African colony. Lucien Cordier is the cop of this village, populated with blacks and a few whites (usually racialist and lustful). He is a washout, everyone (including his wife Huguette) humiliates him. He never arrests anyone and looks at elsewhere when a dirty trick occurs. But one day, he turns into a Machiavellian exterminating angel.Read More »
Synopsis
The Tavianis’ adaptation of Goethe’s novel may seem strangely restrained compared to their other fables, but it’s still a work of exquisite elegance and precision. Set in Tuscany during the Napoleonic era, it charts the forces of attraction and repulsion that shape the complex relationships between a happily married baron and his wife (Anglade, Huppert), the baron’s architect friend (Bentivoglio) and the wife’s goddaughter (Gillain). If the story itself (engrossing enough) never seems very much more than an unusually formal period romance, the immaculate performances and the Tavianis’ masterly control of colour, composition and music (a poignant but unexpectedly modernist score from Carlo Crivelli) make for absorbing viewing.Read More »
Synopsis:
One morning at an isolated mansion in the snowy countryside of 1950s France, a family is gathered for the holiday season. But there will be no celebration at all because their beloved patriarch has been murdered! The killer can only be one of the eight women closest to the man of the house. Was it his powerful wife? His spinster sister-in-law? His miserly mother-in-law? Maybe the insolent chambermaid or the loyal housekeeper? Could it possibly have been one of his two young daughters? A surprise visit from the victim’s chic sister sends the household into a tizzy, encouraging hysterics, exacerbating rivalries, and encompassing musical interludes. Comedic situations arise with the revelations of dark family secrets. Seduction dances with betrayal. The mystery of the female psyche is revealed. There are eight women and each is a suspect. Each has a motive. Each has a secret. Beautiful, tempestuous, intelligent, sensual, and dangerous…one of them is guilty. Which one is it?
— Anthony Pereyra (IMDb)Read More »
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Boldly unconventional and cheerful, that’s how one could describe Babou. Never having cared about social conventions, she is suddenly faced with the realization that her own daughter is ashamed of her and therefore refuses to invite her to her wedding. Hurt in her pride, Babou tries to regain her daughter’s respect by starting anew. She accepts the challenge of selling time-sharing-flats at the Belgian seaside during the off-season, in a desperate attempt to prove her real worth and her motherly love to her daughter.Read More »
Hannah and Violetta are an odd couple: an elusive mother and a little girl in search of maternal love, a fanciful artist and her reluctant model.
When Hannah asks Violetta if she would like to be her model, her life with her loving grandmother is turned upside down. From a normal childhood to muse of the trendy Paris art scene…Read More »
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Erika Kohut is a piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory prestigious music school in Vienna. In her early forties and single, she lives with her overprotective and controlling mother in a hermetically sealed world of love-hate and dependency, where there is no room for men. Her sex life consists of voyeurism and masochistic self-injury. Lonely and alienated, Erika finds solace by visiting sex shops and experimenting with masochism. Ata a recital, she befriends Walter, a handsome young man, whom she seduces and with whom she begins an illicit affair. As Erika slowly drifts closer to the brink of emotional disorder, she uses the love-stricken Walter to explore her darkest sado-masochistic fantasies, which eventually lead to her undoing.Read More »