This film concentrates on a group of people who have trouble adjusting to mainstream society. From a woman running away from her previous life, to a man with a terminal disease, to a pop artist misunderstood by his contemporaries, the film looks on with sympathy and compassionate humor on a set of people who, for whatever reason, just don’t fit in.
Category: Arthouse
Shindo’s “Hymn” is one of many adaptions of Tanizaki’s classical novella ‘Shunkinsho’ (‘A Portrait of Shunkin’, 1933). The story tells of the adoration of Sasuke for his mistress, the blind samisen-teacher Shunkin, who treats him imperiously and subjects him to cruel beatings. After an unknown intruder probably one of her pupils, who seeks revenge for her cruel behaviour, pours boiling water on the sleeping Shunkin’s face, Sasuke blinds himself in order not to behold her disfigurement. Sasuke’s sacrifice, made in response to Shunkin’s tacit wish, seals their life-long relationship.
Elle steps off the balcony of her Parisian apartment, plunging to her death. Why has she done it? As her pawnbroker husband, Luc, looks over her dead body, director Robert Bresson’s eerie, elegant picture traces their lives together in flashback. Elle is the “Gentle Creature” — meek, dreamy and thoughtful. She entrances Luc, who pursues her passionately. They marry, but the match never seems right, and things turn sour, grimly heading toward an inevitable end.
One morning Jun gets into an angry argument with his father over his girlfriend whom his father disapproves of. In a fit of bloody rage, Jun kills his father. He decides to turn himself into the police, but his mother stops him. Eerily calm after the shock, she suggests that they dispose of the body, and then move to another place where no one will know them. When Jun moves the body out of the house, his mother suddenly changes moods again and points a knife at him, as tragedy begets tragedy.
In the summer of 1967, journalist Katharina is visited in Munich by her French friend, Anne. They take day trips and visit cafés, acquaintances and parties. In a series of conversations, they talk about the chances for female emancipation in a male-dominated society… This essay film puts five different types of women at the centre of the episodic narrative – an unmarried professional woman, a divorcee confused about her future, a career woman, a deceived wife and a “dream woman”
Mathias is a Belgian linguist, living with French theatre producer Anne. After a quarrel about moral questions, they take a train to attend a congress. While Mathias sleeps, Anne disappears. The train stops in the middle of the country and Mathias gets off the train with an older man, Hernhutter, and a young one, Val. The train moves off without them being able to catch it up. They will find a village, but cannot get any help because they do not understand a word of what the inhabitants say…
Jacek is a handsome young Pole who belongs to a drama company. One day, in the streets of Gdansk, he meets Marguerite, a beautiful daughter of the French consul, and immediately falls for her.