Alex Andero feels stuck washing dishes in his family’s trattoria in New York City. He wants to write screenplays, and he has a great idea. Trouble is, he’s not much with a typewriter; so, when his cousin calls and says a producer likes the idea and wants a script, Alex swallows his homophobia and asks for help from Elliot Springer, a talented writer who’s an insecure, gay, Jewish nebbish. Elliot doesn’t want the job, but Alex sets him up with Joey, a good-looking actor who works in the cafe. Elliot and Joey are soon getting it on, the script is slowly emerging, and Alex is discovering the beauty of Gwen, a woman in his writing class. Then, ego and greed threaten the partnership.
Category: Drama
Marie Chapdelaine leaves her rural Quebec village and travels to Montreal to find her estranged lumberjack father who disappeared seven years ago. She meets Armand St-Amour, a former friend of her father and the owner of a country-and-western bar called the Rodeo Club. Armand takes the opportunity to exploit the naive and innocent young girl and tells her that if she works for him as a topless singer he will put her in touch with her father’s mistress who will know where he is.
Based on Kimio Yanagisawa’s popular manga, Shinj Sômai’s directorial debut perfectly evokes the pain and joy of adolescence in its depiction of a high school boy and girl who end up sharing a house after a real estate agent’s mistake. Several techniques that came to characterize Sômai’s approach to direction, such as long takes and long shots, are already abundantly evident in this film.
Kumi lives a hippie-like life in Tokyo’s outskirts. One night while drunk she stumbles into an abandoned industrial site, except in addition to deserted factories, it is full of forests and greenery. She decides to move there, even further away from the civilization she had already left.
The inhabitants of a small provincial town live trapped in their rancid traditions and customs. In this oppressive environment, Isabel, a 35-year-old single woman, feels like a failure for not having married. Juan and his group of friends, who fight boredom by imagining sick jokes, make Isabel believe that Juan is in love with her and that he is going to ask her to marry him.
A French lieutenant makes a bet that he can seduce any woman in town in the two weeks before his regiment leaves for maneuvers, but his chosen target (a Parisian divorcée) isn’t like other girls he’s known.
A jobless young couple, Yoshigi and Tsutue, wind up at the outskirts of the Suzaki red-light district in Tokyo. Tsutue talks her way into a job pouring sake for male customers at a small bar run by a sympathetic older woman, while Yoshigi is shunted off into a nearby noodle shop, where he gets a job delivering noodles. Tsutue charms and runs off with one of her clients. Yoshigi, ignoring the attentions of a sweet co-worker, pursues Tsutue.
After an absence of years, Mara (15) moves into her hippy Dad’s shack in remote river country. Marooned in Harry’s world, Mara broods on her haughty artist mother who lives at the top of the valley. When Mara falls for Herringbone John, a tramp ‘waiting for death to come along and knock him on the head’, their encounter is a trip through the ecstasy and agony of romantic love. What Mara finds on the other side sets her free.