An anthology film drama featuring a poetic mirror structure based on existential identity. In “The Immortals,” adapted from a Helder Prista Monteiro play, two famous doctors, an 80-year-old father, and his 60-year-old son, contemplate senility and death. “Suzy,” from an Antonio Patricio story, is set in the ’30s when a young courtesan dies on the operating table. “Mother of the River” is from an Agustina Bessa-Luis fable about eternal life.
Tag: FRANCE
Ema is a sweet and innocent girl who is so beautiful she turns the head of every man she passes. Her life takes a despairing turn for the worse when her father forces her into a passionless marriage to his friend, a wealthy doctor. To make matters worse, she is relocated to the scenic but unfamiliar and isolated vineyards of Abraham’s Valley, Portugal where the breathtaking river Douro flows. Trapped in a marriage to a man she does not love, she scorns her husband and threatens to kill herself rather than submit to his desires.
——UPGRADED——
In 1930s Paris, seemingly innocent 18-year-old Violette Nozière spends her nights seducing older men. When her current lover needs money, the troubled Violette plots to murder her dispassionate middle-class parents to help him out.
A surreal odyssey in which a melancholic maidservant crosses paths with a homicidal little boy, travels to a tiny island of pirates and encounters a man with multiple personalities.
The scene is a pre-French Revolution Bastille, where various political prisoners are being held: a woman who was raped and impregnated by the king, a police chief who was accused of selling bad pork, and the Marquis, who was unjustly accused of working for the overthrow of the king. The Marquis is only interested in writing his deviant stories, while his penis yearns for a little action (they argue about this frequently), the prime candidate being the jailer who likes to be buggered. The corrupt priest arranges to have the pregnant woman raped by the Marquis so they can claim the king had nothing to do with it. The priest also steals the Marquis’ manuscripts and publishes them for his own profit. Things come to a head as the people rise up against the tyranny.
Based on D. H. Lawrence’s 1928 novel of the same name, Lady Chatterley’s Lover stars Danielle Darrieux, Leo Genn, and Erno Crisa in this controversial tale of adultery! After her husband is paralyzed from fighting in WWI, Lady Chatterley feels a loss of intimacy between her husband and herself, and decides to have an affair with the gamekeeper, a man of a lower class.
Jeanne, a young woman, born and raised in Northern France, is visiting the Mediterranean city of Toulon for the first time. She is prompted by two events: the wedding of her sister, and the disappearance of her brother. He is a deaf-mute who supports himself as a pickpocket under the tutelage of a young Arab and an older bisexual married man with a weakness for young Arabs. The girl meets them and finds herself attracted to the young Arab and the older man’s son, who is also bisexual like his father. She is soon torn between the two in a romantic and sexual dilemma that mirrors France’s political turmoil regarding the nation’s growing Arab population.
This fictionalized story, based on the family life of writer James Jones, is an emotional slice-of-life story. Jones is portrayed here portrayed as Bill Willis, a former war hero turned author who combats alcoholism and is starting to experience health problems. Living in France with his wife, daughter, and an adopted son, the family travels an unconventional road which casts them as outsiders to others. Preaching a sexual freedom, his daughter’s sexual discovery begins at an early age and betrays her when the family moves to Hanover in America. Her overt sexuality clashes with the values of her teenage American peers and gives her a problematic reputation.