1990 – 1991 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $20.00
1990
Cinema Paradiso
Life and life-as-art are intertwined in this semi-autobiographical reverie about director Tornatore's childhood. Set in Sicily, the movie house is the emotional center of village life — the place where problems are revealed and changes occur. The hero is a fatherless boy who attaches himself to the gruff projectionist (Philippe Noiret), learning his trade and the wisdom gleaned from John Wayne movies. His mentor recognizes his own entrapment in the enchantment surrounding the movie house and sends his surrogate son into the wider world to experience life. A lyrical ode to the magic of the movies.
In Italian
1990
Enemies, a Love Story
I. B. Singer's story has been successfully recreated by director Paul Mazursky. In the midst of New York City's swirling vitality, four survivors drift, haunted by their terrible past. The hero, Ron Silver, has constructed a double life built on a web of lies — feeling the pain of guilt and gratitude toward the wife who rescued him in Poland, the pain of wild passion for his mercurial mistress, and then the pain of shame and fear as his first wife, whom he thought had died in the camps, comes walking toward him. Anjelica Huston, very much alive.
In English
1990
The Little Thief
Brought to the screen by his former assistant Claude Miller, Truffaut's last story has his typical central character — a disaffected adolescent searching for love and identity. Having been abandoned by her parents, Janine is raised by her aunt and uncle in constricted circumstances on a farm. Obsessed by the movies and drawn to the opulence she sees in them, she becomes a thief. Discovered and sent from her home, she continues her misadventures as she acts out her romantic fantasies in the city. This impulsive gamin may steal your heart.
In French
1991
Weapons of the Spirit
Director Pierre Sauvage explores the question of great good in the midst of great evil in this documentary about his birthplace, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon — a town of 5,000 farmers and shopkeepers who rescued about the same number of Jews from the Nazis. The community was largely of Huguenot descent with its own historical memory of persecution within Catholic France. It also had an inspired leader who introduced the study of pacifism well before the Nazis arrived. And so they baffled the Nazis by arming with weapons of the spirit, recalling what seems to them simply decent behavior, as opposed to heroism.
In French
1991
Yaaba
Universal themes are woven into this fireside fable from the West African village where director Idrissa Ouédraogo filmed it and where he grew up. The superstitious villagers have blamed their misfortunes on an old woman, driving her from the town and shunning her. A boy and girl overcome their fear of her and the three become friends. When the young girl is hurt, the old woman's ability to help save her awakens the villagers to their cruelty and this injustice is movingly repudiated. Winner of the 1989 International Critics Prize at Cannes.
In Mooré
1991
Mama, There's a Man in Your Bed
This delightfully humorous romance is about wanting something so much that the usual barriers are simply ignored. Romuald, the white executive of a yogurt company, is being set up by co-workers for scandal and dismissal. The plots are revealed to him by Juliette, the Black charwoman and mother of five, who knows more about his business than he does. Romuald is irresistibly drawn to Juliette — first for help, then for refuge, and finally for her strength of character. Juliette is the spiritual center of this film. He is rich only in money. This rollicking version of Romeo and Juliet is one where everyone is going to live happily ever after.
In French
1991
Jesus of Montreal
Denys Arcand's parable destroys religiosity with wit while it restates the spiritual message of Jesus so often obscured through the centuries. A priest in Montreal hires a young actor to take the role of Jesus, find a supporting cast, and restage the Passion. The cast, found in unlikely places, studies intensively old and new sources and produces an electrifying and, in its way, very reverent performance. Their immediate popular success quickly antagonizes established power, and the stage is set for the identification of the players with the roles they have assumed. A modern retelling of the conflict of the worldly with the other-worldly, flowing in a stream of seemingly effortless invention.
In French
1991
The Story of Women
Based on an actual case, this is a fiercely honest study by Claude Chabrol of one woman's transformation during the German occupation of France — from a desperate housewife struggling to support her children, to an amateur abortionist, and finally, to a prisoner of state. Betrayed to the same authorities who daily cooperate with and even perpetrate great evil in the name of the Vichy government. Chabrol's interest is in the components of character which lead to the choices made by the woman, and in the contrast of acceptable behaviors for men and women within the society they shared. Isabelle Huppert won the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival.
In French
1991
May Fools
Against the backdrop of the May 1968 student rebellions, several generations of a well-to-do bourgeois family gather in the wine country of southwest France to bury their matriarch and divide her estate. The vast national disruptions are parodied in the immediate disagreements which surface in this hasty family reunion. Before long the ominous radio reports have convinced them they will soon be faced with armed Stalinists at their door, and they flee for safety into the nearby woods. Louis Malle has created a light-hearted comedy of manners where absurdity and beauty coexist in equal measure.
In French
1991 – 1992 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $22.00
1991
Nasty Girl
One of Time's Ten Best, this film is based on a true story which still continues. It tells of a young girl, Sonja, in a German town in the 1970s who wins an essay contest and makes her town proud. She decides to enter another contest with the story of the integrity of her town in the face of the Nazis. Now she is met with locked file drawers of old newspapers. Sonja persists, eventually bringing suit against the town. The reaction begins with paranoia, gradually changes to resentment, then threats, and finally assault. Michael Verhoeven won Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival for this quasi-documentary about the desire to transform or forget past actions of which we are ashamed.
In German
1991
Cyrano de Bergerac
Gérard Depardieu portrays the ultimate Cyrano. We all know the story of how his grotesque nose causes him such a lack of self-esteem that he agrees to woo his beloved Roxanne with passionate words plumbed from his heart in proxy for his handsome but tongue-tied cousin. Depardieu plays Cyrano lustily and filled with panache, but ironically aware of the pain beneath his psychological armor. The pathos and humor of this classic tragicomedy are fully realized as we ride the whirlwind of Cyrano's emotions. Superlative cinematography assists the mood with artistry of lighting and design.
In French
1991
C'est la Vie
A 13-year-old's diary records the drama of a family's dissolution, in sharp contrast to its holiday setting at the beach. The mother feels smothered by her marriage and her subsequent affair drives her uncomprehending husband to loss of control and desperation. These adult behaviors seem arbitrary and capricious — only the pain is very clear to the two daughters. Author and director Diane Kurys has caught every nuance in this third film of her autobiographical series, which began with Peppermint Soda and Entre Nous.
In French
1992
Ju Dou
Banned in China and nearly removed from consideration for the Academy Awards, this is a vivid and melodramatic folktale of forbidden love, revenge, and retribution set in a rural dye factory in the 1920s. The setting is metaphorically vital — rich reds and golds in cascading fabrics speak of passion and life, while the interlocking roofs of the village reflect the constraints that will forever surround the lovers. Director Zhang Yimou feels strongly that pervasive repression of individuality is wrong, but shows the lovers go too far as well. A gorgeously photographed, powerful narrative.
In Mandarin
Feb 1, 1992
Journey of Hope
Based on a true story, this eloquent winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar calls timely attention to the desperate plight of refugees everywhere. A Kurdish father yearns to give more to his family than the dusty farm in Turkey will ever allow. Words on a postcard about "paradise" in Switzerland cause him, his wife, and one of his sons to set forth on a perilous voyage, unaware of its hazards and filled with enthusiasm. Good Samaritans help them, but many unscrupulous smugglers and swindlers are waiting to exploit such people. One arduous adventure follows another on this doomed journey, leading to a gripping, climactic sequence.
In Kurdish & Turkish
1992
Iron and Silk
With beguiling naturalness, Mark Salzman plays himself in the film version of his book about living for two years in China. Having majored in Chinese at Yale, he leaves to teach English to teachers in Hunan. He wryly tells of the cultural clash which only eventually blends into a form of brotherhood. He falls in love with a woman who cares for him but whom he cannot win for political reasons. He also finds a martial arts mentor who doesn't know if an American can bear the pain it takes to find inner strength and true perception of life. He must have found it — the film has been described as done with a skill that transcends surface beauty.
In English & Mandarin
1992
Impromptu
This sprightly comedy presents the insouciant bohemian circle that celebrated Romanticism in the Paris of 1830. The center of this tempestuous group is the freewheeling feminist George Sand, played superbly by Judy Davis. The shy and consumptive Chopin and his music have become her obsession. In a gathering of artists at a social climber's country place, she is in pursuit of Chopin while the other men are in pursuit of her. These are people who live with an appetite for life and are dedicated to art as transcendent. An accomplished cast allows us to admire them while we enjoy this irreverent frolic.
In English
1992
Open Doors
A startling opening to the Italian contender for Best Foreign Film makes the viewer a witness to a triple murder. The setting is Palermo in the 1930s, and the murderer is a fascist underling and scapegoat who wants to die. The case appears open and shut — everyone is eager to make it so except the Judge, played with riveting yet quiet force by Gian Maria Volonté. The film is not about the case but about the judicial process, about conflicting ideologies and passion for principles. Volonté's talent makes the tensions of thought visible and involves the viewer totally in the intellectual processes at issue.
In Italian
1992
Everybody's Fine
In this lyrical story of a lonely old father's journey to surprise his adult children with visits, director Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso) studies the effects of inevitable change upon our families and our illusions. It is a wistful movie — as we travel from Naples to Turin, we see his children's necessity to hide their actual lives for fear of disappointing his expectations. Marcello Mastroianni brings magic to his role as the courtly and charming Sicilian patriarch who wears thick glasses to symbolize his inability to see life as it is. A warmly acted, bittersweet tragedy of life.
In Italian
1992 – 1993 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $24.00
1992
Toto le Héros
Cannes' Camera d'Or went to Belgian director Jaco Van Dormael for this inventive and exuberant reverie on a life gone wrong. Thomas, an old and embittered man, broods over thoughts that his rightful life of riches and adventure was stolen from him in a maternity-ward mix-up sixty years ago. His life passes before him in a scrambled stream of associated images that jump from past to present, from fantasy to reality, and from pathos to droll wit. In his collage of memories we see that Thomas actually had an ideal family, and that — although he never became the secret agent of his dreams — he experienced love. This imaginative film illustrates the absurdity of longing for someone else's life.
In French
1992
Hear My Song
Ned Beatty gives a performance for the ages as Josef Locke, a real-life Irish tenor who made women cry in the music halls of the 1950s. The film begins with a scheming young concert promoter, Mickey, trying to keep his shabby nightclub open and woo back his girl. After hiring several disastrous acts, he becomes convinced he can save his club by bringing in Mr. X — an imposter he thinks is Josef Locke. This disaster propels Mickey to Ireland to find and coax the real Josef Locke into a comeback appearance. Josef is found and intransigent, but Mickey has an unexpected lure. Then we find out what real entertainment means!
In English
1992
Mediterraneo
This sweet and gentle anti-war film is set in World War II and begins with eight Italian military misfits trying to occupy a not-very-strategic Greek island for Mussolini. They make an extraordinarily inept landing where they just barely avoid killing each other. Before long the radio is smashed, the boat is sunk, and they are stranded in paradise. The islanders return and these non-soldiers drift into hedonism — painting frescoes, dancing, and falling in love. The comedy is balanced with an underlying note of sadness, for in this idyll there is no distraction from thoughts of their mortality. Director Salvatores won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
In Italian
1993
American Dream
In her Oscar-winning documentary, Barbara Kopple illustrates the way the ideal of shared responsibility between management and labor gives way before unembarrassed greed in the 1980s. Beginning in carefully calm tones, she shows us the stair-steps to catastrophe as they occurred in the meat-packers' strike against Hormel and Co. in Austin, Minnesota in 1985. Although Hormel had made a profit, the company decides to roll back workers' pay. The modest version of the American dream held by these formerly loyal workers is betrayed as they try to choose between principle and survival. Justice is vanquished by power in this gripping and poignant film.
In English
1993
Europa Europa
An early scene of this true story is Solly Perel's bris — his circumcision is so central, as a Jew living among Nazis, that he claims to remember the ceremony. The film shows his life during World War II as a series of fantastic escapes, lightning-fast analyses of suddenly changed situations, and chameleon-like adaptations to new circumstances. Solly and the viewers can never forget that any prosaic call of nature can bring him fatal exposure. His survival depends on his total immersion into his changing roles: a good communist, then a "pure German" interpreter, and finally a student in a school for Hitler Youth. Solly manages to survive, but never to experience his true self.
In German & Russian
1993
Raise the Red Lantern
Social oppression is the theme of this gorgeously presented poetic fable by Zhang Yimou. Because her father has died, 19-year-old Songlian must give up her life as a university student and any dreams of future independence. She accepts with sorrow and bitterness a marriage of convenience as the fourth wife of a rich, old man. Songlian soon discovers the few choices available to her may only be gained by struggling with the other wives for the old man's attentions. The women never consider cooperating, illustrating instead behavior typical of powerless people. Zhang's films make money for China but could not be seen there.
In Mandarin
1993
The Double Life of Véronique
There is a hallucinatory quality to this beautiful and elusive story about two women linked by their sense of having a double somewhere. In fact, Weronika in Poland catches a momentary glimpse of Véronique getting on a French tour bus. The women share attributes large and small, from their musical talents to liking to walk barefoot. When Weronika collapses and dies in a performance, Véronique immediately is suffused with a sense of loss and changes the direction of her musical career. The film suggests its story of a mysterious sisterhood with poetic images. Irène Jacob won the 1991 Cannes Best Actress Award for her double role.
In French & Polish
1993
Life Is Sweet
Director Mike Leigh and his cast created this film collaboratively and, as a result, the characters just seem to evolve, as in life. The focus is on the domestic life of a lower-middle-class suburban family — a relentlessly cheerful mother, her slow-moving husband, and their very unidentical 20-year-old twins. Natalie, a pretty plumber, enjoys her parents; her sister Nicola is a secret bulimic who hates her life and tries endlessly to provoke her accepting family. No resolution is offered except the observation that people rarely change more than slightly, but that sometimes that's just enough. The National Society of Film Critics gave this film Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress.
In English
1993
A Woman's Tale
This movie portrays the last turbulent weeks in the life of Martha, a feisty 70-year-old woman dying of cancer. Written by director Paul Cox and actress Sheila Florance, it is loosely based on Florance's life — five days after she received the Australian Oscar for this performance, she died. But the film is neither depressing nor morbid. Martha holds on ferociously to her independence, fends off her insensitive son, and finds absolute joy in her friendship with Anna, the district nurse. In portraying this indomitable woman, Florance has modeled how to face both life and death with dignity and courage.
In English
1993 – 1994 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $24.00
1993
Indochine
This epic film about the end of French power in Indochina is a drama of politics and passion, of racial emotion, and of colonial failure. Catherine Deneuve plays the beautiful owner of a rubber plantation, the loving mother of her adopted Vietnamese daughter — a girl born a princess in a distant province. Their love isn't strong enough to withstand their having a romance with the same handsome naval officer. The mother pulls strings and has him transferred to a remote outpost. Her daughter, desperately in love, follows him on foot and for the first time sees the extreme poverty and oppression of her people. Inevitably, she becomes a revolutionary. Indochine won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
In French & Vietnamese
1993
The Oak
A movie must move at lightning speed to capture the bizarre, nearly hysterical world of Romania in the last days of the Ceaușescu dictatorship. Normalcy doesn't work in this world — only a fearless wise man or a fool can avoid being co-opted and dehumanized. The "fool" is Nela, the heroine, who we meet watching movies of her childhood unaware that her father has died beside her. When her father's wish to donate his body to science is refused, Nela starts off on a journey of discovery, clutching his ashes in a Nescafé jar. Surviving the violence all around them, she and a doctor bury the past under the roots of an oak, symbol of hope, and plan their future.
In Romanian
1993
Stolen Children
Fleeting moments that capture the beauty of life are presented by Gianni Amelio in this return to Italian neo-realism. In his poignant tale, two young victims are falling through the minimal protective net of an indifferent society. Rescued from childhood prostitution, 11-year-old Rosetta and her 9-year-old brother are sent under the care of a serious but uncaring policeman to a foster home which refuses to accept them. As the trip continues, the young policeman's feelings become entwined with those of his untrusting charges. Impulsively sharing pleasures remembered from his own childhood, they begin to have fun together, only to discover that these moments of true parenting have created a scandal.
In Italian
1994
The Story of Qiu Ju
The woman's position in Chinese society is again the subject behind the story in Zhang Yimou's most recent film, winner of the Golden Lion at the 1993 Venice Film Festival. Qiu Ju, played by the beautiful Gong Li, is simultaneously trapped in and excluded from society by the very cultural ideas she herself exemplifies. Her husband has insulted the village chief, whose answering kick causes Qiu Ju's implacable but doomed search for justice to ever-higher levels of the bureaucracy. The officials are not unresponsive but must first save face for the chief. A fascinating quasi-documentary glimpse of China today.
In Mandarin
1994
Olivier, Olivier
Director Agnieszka Holland, who created Europa Europa from a true story, once again begins with reality and leads us to question just what that is. In this enigmatic tragedy a family is shattered by the loss of their son. After his disappearance, the parents separate. Six years pass. The parental longing for their child continues to be so overwhelming that when someone claiming to be him is found, they are unable to perceive clearly whether he is or is not Olivier. Nor is the viewer. The real mystery begins just when the apparent mystery seems resolved.
In French
1994
Like Water for Chocolate
Alfonso Arau directed this exuberant fantasy, transposing the film from the novel written by his wife, Laura Esquivel. Set against the Mexican Revolution, it tells the story of that national upheaval through the marvelous mayhem taking place in one family ruled by tradition and a stern matriarch. By custom, Tita must dedicate her life to the care of her mother. Tutored by the aging family cook to feed the soul as well as the body, her meals bring astonishing emotional side effects — her tears in the batter cause massive weeping, her love in the sauce helps spark the Revolution. This elegant and affectionate satire handles epic themes of political and emotional liberation in an intimate way.
In Spanish
1994
The Last Days of Chez Nous
Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career) has set her most recent film in the outskirts of contemporary Sydney, focusing on the troubled family relationships taking place in a rambling house called Chez Nous. A successful writer, Beth, is the center point for her teenage daughter, her restless French expatriate husband, and for her sister who suddenly arrives to join them. While Beth is away hoping to work on issues in herself, the attraction between her husband and her sister bursts into a passionate affair. This dramatic betrayal forces the changes which Beth had not wanted to see. An authentic experience that will linger in your thoughts.
In English
1994
Un Coeur en Hiver
Claude Sautet directed this elegant and fascinating psychodrama which reveals the powerful reverberations that result from inaction, as opposed to action. It's the story of a love triangle involving two fellow workers in a musical repair shop. One of them is about to move in with his lover (Emmanuelle Béart) when she meets his co-worker (Daniel Auteuil) and falls in love with him instead. Auteuil is attracted to her but withdraws, unable to make a loving commitment. Auteuil makes and repairs violins but refuses to play them, while Béart converts her passion into her music. Winner of the Silver Lion and the International Critics Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
In French
1994
The Piano
Co-winner of the Golden Palm Award and recipient of a standing ovation at Cannes. Jane Campion directed this Gothic romance set in New Zealand 150 years ago. It tells of a mute widow who comes with her young daughter as the mail-order bride of a colonial landowner. She brings her dearest possession, her piano — her only means of self-expression. When her new husband refuses to transport it inland, the piano is purchased by an illiterate and colorful Englishman who allows her to buy it back key by key with increasingly sexual favors, until they are involved in a grand passion. Holly Hunter received the Best Actress Award at Cannes.
In English
1994 – 1995 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $25.00
1994
The Scent of Green Papaya
Winner of the award for best first film at the 1993 Cannes Festival. Directed by Tran Anh Hùng, filming began in Vietnam but lack of film technicians caused him to switch to Paris. It is the story of a 10-year-old orphan who becomes a servant to a Vietnamese household. The story traces her life in Saigon with this family in pre-war Vietnam from 1951 to 1961. The family is an unhappy one. While Mui becomes a faithful and unobtrusive servant, the family falls apart emotionally and financially. Mui, in a slow-moving almost silent-film performance, matures into a lovely woman, eventually finding love with a pianist and composer. Noted for its nostalgic and impressionistic remembrance of a lost Vietnam.
In Vietnamese
1994
Belle Époque
A Cannes prize winner set in rural Spain in 1931, the year it became an idealistic but short-lived democracy. A young, handsome, naïve army deserter meets an artist and easy-going anarchist, Manolo. About to return to Madrid, he instead meets Manolo's four daughters who have just returned from the city. The comedy begins as Fernando decides to stay — each daughter decides to make love to him in her own fashion. Director Fernando Trueba was influenced by Billy Wilder and Luis Buñuel. This is not a realistic film but, as Trueba says, "how he would like life to be" — about liberated women, lustiness, playfulness, and delicacy.
In Spanish
1994
Bhaji on the Beach
Director Gurinder Chadha tells the story of a group of Indian women living in Britain, off on a one-day bus trip to Blackpool. This comedy-drama portrays three generations of Indian women adjusting to the conflicts of a traditional male-dominated Indian culture and the realities of life in England. With a light, refreshing touch we meet many characters — including Ginder, who has left her abusive husband, and Hashida, a medical student troubled by an unwanted pregnancy. The women manage to have a fine time in spite of their intergenerational differences until the men show up. The film makes many personal and political points but never loses its good humor and light touch.
In English
1995
The Snapper
"Snapper" is an Irish term for baby. The problem with this baby is that its pregnant mother, Sharon, is unmarried. She knows who the father is but won't tell anyone — and with good reason. He's an "eejit" who boasts about the pregnancy to his drinking buddies. Sharon doesn't care to marry the father and this simple tale, set in present-day Ireland, is handled with good humor and many a sharp joke.
In English
1995
The Accompanist
Set in Paris in the winter of 1942–43 under the Nazis. Helena, an opera singer, and her husband Charles Brice are living well — Helena performs for the Nazis, Charles is resolved to continue his pre-occupation style of high living. Sophie Vasseur, a young pianist living in poverty, is hired as Helena's accompanist and treated like a family member. When Charles senses it is time to flee France, the three head for London. Sophie becomes involved in a shipboard romance and must choose between her lover and her employer. A beautiful, moving, tragic love story with a surprising climax.
In French
1995
Farewell My Concubine
An epic historical drama of China from the 1920s to 1977, using the continuously unsettled times as a backdrop for the lives of two type-cast male Beijing Opera actors. Director Chen Kaige keeps the action moving rapidly, displaying the ironies of art versus the real world. The major theme is the question: in times of perpetual political upheavals in values, can one ever be true to anyone or anything — friend, wife, or one's art or ideals? The movie was the first Chinese film to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
In Mandarin
1995
White
One of Krzysztof Kieślowski's "Three Colors" series — each film representing one of the colors of the French flag: Blue for Liberty, White for Equality, Red for Fraternity. The film's hero, Karol Karol, is a sad sack. He refuses to accept total rejection by his wife, Dominique, who leaves him destitute. He manages to leave France, sneaks back to capitalist Poland, becomes a successful and unscrupulous capitalist, and then seeks revenge — winding up reconciling with Dominique. Some critics noted similarities between this film and the work of Charlie Chaplin.
In Polish & French
1995
The Blue Kite
A metaphor for life as soaring blue kites that are always getting caught in trees. This Chinese film by Tian Zhuangzhuang explores life in Beijing from 1953 to 1967, seen through the lives of ordinary people. The main characters are a mother and her son Tietou (Iron Head) for his first 14 years — a product of the Maoist period. In spite of the violence depicted, this is a sophisticated, tender, and meditative movie that won the Grand Prix at the Tokyo Film Festival. Too threatening for the Chinese censors, the film was banned in China and the director was prohibited from making films.
In Mandarin
1995
The Wedding Banquet
A comedy about two gay partners — Wai-Tung, a successful Taiwanese immigrant, and Simon, a white American in Manhattan. Wai-Tung is urged by his parents in Taiwan to marry and provide grandchildren. The men decide to stage a phony marriage with an illegal immigrant as a marriage of convenience. The scheme starts to backfire when the parents show up for an extended visit prior to the wedding. The banquet becomes a wild and funny affair. The movie provides a portrait of traditional Chinese attitudes about sex and posterity.
In Mandarin & English
1995 – 1996 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:00 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $25.00
1995
Red
Krzysztof Kieślowski concludes his "Three Colors" series with this elegant, seductive, and beautiful tale of fate and love. Like The Double Life of Véronique, Red is about luck and coincidence — and whether that's all they are. Stars Irène Jacob as Valentine, a dancer and model who, like her name, is an emblem of romantic optimism. The other two characters — a lonely old judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and a young lawyer whose girlfriend will betray him — are oblivious to their interwoven destinies. If not for kismet, Auguste and Valentine could be lovers. And if not for the tyranny of time, so could Valentine and the judge.
In French
1995
Burnt by the Sun
The winner of the Foreign Language Oscar is a towering personal achievement for Nikita Mikhalkov, who wrote, produced, directed, and starred as a legendary Bolshevik soldier whose idyllic family life is disrupted by the arrival of an old friend now working for Stalin's secret police. The movie's title, taken from a Russian folk song, has to do with the misplaced loyalties and subsequent betrayals that followed the Russian Revolution. By focusing tightly on one affected family for one day, Mikhalkov shows how 300 million people surrendered their freedom to a bad idea.
In Russian
1995
Vanya on 42nd Street
Chekhov for people who hate Chekhov, theater for people who hate theater, and a movie for people who love movies. Louis Malle's film of André Gregory's perpetually-in-rehearsal production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya in a decrepit New York movie house is something of a transcendent miracle. "This movie is a tribute to the magic dance of performance and text and the irrelevance of all other matters. The movie simply becomes, seamlessly and totally, the play; and then both become the universe, as every other element melts away." (Stephen Hunter, Baltimore Sun)
In English
1996
The Postman
Based on a Chilean novel, The Postman tells the entirely fictional story of a friendship that blossoms between a simple Italian mail carrier and the celebrated Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. The year is 1952, and Neruda — an outspoken communist exiled by Chile's repressive government — has been offered sanctuary on an island off the coast near Naples. Philippe Noiret (from Cinema Paradiso) plays Neruda and Massimo Troisi is the postman. Troisi, sadly, died at 41 just after shooting was completed. Always plagued by a weak heart, he had delayed transplant surgery to finish the project, joking that he wanted the last piece of his old heart to become part of this new film.
In Italian
1996
Strawberry and Chocolate
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's film is mainly set in an old Havana apartment building whose chipped and gnarled walls offer a nostalgic reminder of the old Spanish Baroque colonial city's sinfully decadent glories, out of place in the austerely functional Communist state. In this peculiar ruin, a flamboyant and intelligent gay artist, a retired prostitute, and a handsome young male virgin fall in and out of love and long for greater freedom. A touching plea for friendship, sex, and art. If the revolution isn't going to succeed, couldn't we at least have a little more of the old Cuban spirit of live and let live?
In Spanish
1996
Farinelli
Writer-director Gérard Corbiau tackles — for the first time in movies — the castrati, the 18th-century singers whose castration as boys left them with voices capable of reaching unearthly highs while maintaining remarkable power. His subject is the most famous castrato of all, Carlo Broschi, better known as Farinelli. In his heyday, Farinelli was the Baroque equivalent of a rock superstar who was mobbed wherever he went, besieged by groupies, lavishly paid, and thoroughly pampered. Corbiau and his collaborators painstakingly recreate this exotic world of wealth and privilege, and their presentation of Farinelli in performance is hair-raising. One of the five Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Language Film.
In French & Italian
1996
Colonel Chabert
Gérard Depardieu stars in this epic drama based on the Balzac classic. In a twist on The Return of Martin Guerre, Depardieu plays a returning war hero thought dead who finds his wife has remarried and claimed his inheritance. The situation is so inherently dramatic and the resulting intrigues so engrossing that the film never loses interest. Ultimately, Colonel Chabert becomes more than just the recounting of a strange incident — it's also a parable about the difference between identity and selfhood, and how society will often confer the former only on those willing to compromise the latter.
In French
1996
Eat Drink Man Woman
A delicious domestic comedy about a master chef and his daughters, from Ang Lee (director of The Wedding Banquet). In the kitchen of master chef Tao Chu, food is all. A seemingly lonely widower and father of three maturing and conflicted daughters, he is an artist — steaming, frying, baking, basting, wokking, not talking, and rendering as sumptuous a meal as has ever hit the screen. Incredibly, everything he has prepared is for a single Sunday dinner — a weekly ritual in which his daughters each struggle to express the love they all feel for each other while coping with distinct but similar problems of life and love.
In Mandarin
Jun 1, 1996
Shanghai Triad
Zhang Yimou's seventh feature, unlike anything he has done before. The film plays like an old Warner Bros. gangster movie. Adapted from a novel, Shanghai Triad is the simple but visually stunning story of an attempted double-cross of Shanghai's underworld godfather by his No. 1 lieutenant during the 1930s. The lieutenant makes his play by seducing the godfather's ambitious mistress Xiao Jingbao (played by the heart-stopping Gong Li), whom he promises will take over the godfather's cabaret after the coup. Critics at the 1995 Cannes Festival called it the most exhilarating movie shown at the festival.
In Mandarin
1996 – 1997 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:00 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $25.00
1996
Antonia's Line
Winner of the 1995 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, this is a marvelous fable about four generations of strong-willed women in a farming village whose failed parochialism and male domination stand in for the failures of civilization at large. It opens with an elderly woman awakening on a day she declares will be her last, then takes us back to cover the past 50 years. There are tales of romance and tragedy, sexual exhilaration and sexual violence, loyalty and betrayal. Its themes deal with the cycle of life, the concept of time, prejudice, and the roles of women in a world wobbling from a few million years too many of male mismanagement.
In Dutch
1996
Lamerica
Gianni Amelio's film, winner of Europe's Felix Award as the best film of 1994, is set in Albania and depicts a nation's lost soul at the end of 50 years of harsh communist rule. Italy, just across the Adriatic Sea, is a dream of freedom and riches for Albania's poor — a kind of America (thus the title). The film dramatizes the consequences of a devious Italian business scheme that backfires: hoping to profit from the prostrate Albanian economy while hoodwinking the Italian government, two men set up a dummy corporation for a phantom shoe factory. Amelio does an amazing job interweaving the real-life tragedy in Albania with his fictional drama.
In Italian & Albanian
1996
Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud
The gravely lovely Emmanuelle Béart plays a directionless young woman divorcing her stick-in-the-mud husband, in this equally contemplative Claude Sautet production (he won a César for each of his last two films). Once again his themes are intimacy, repression, and what's at risk when one soul reaches out to another. The other central character is Monsieur Arnaud (Michel Serrault, the drag queen in the original La Cage aux Folles), a wealthy older gentleman who hires Nelly to type up his memoirs. Serrault acutely captures the anguish of aging, and of love denied, as he switches from assured authority figure to flustered romantic fool — then back again.
In French
1997
My Favorite Season
André Téchiné's moving family psychodrama of estranged middle-aged siblings, Emilie and Antoine (Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil), who are reunited by the illness of their mother. Antoine, a 40-year-old bachelor, and Emilie, a 45-year-old lawyer whose long marriage has been hobbled by her emotional isolation, were as inseparable as children as they are incompatible as adults. Their discovery of what went wrong between them, and of their real feelings for each other, is the narrative thread of the film. Auteuil and Deneuve, playing complex characters who are alternately aloof and dependent, are wonderful together. Watching them rediscover each other is an odd joy, like seeing some complicated mystery unraveled.
In French
1997
Angels and Insects
Director Philip Haas, working with his wife Belinda, has adapted A. S. Byatt's marvelous 1992 novella, shrewdly preserving Byatt's volatile mix of science, sex, and Victorian class warfare. In the early 1860s, a young naturalist, William Adamson, returns to England after years in the Amazon. Dependent on the patronage of a wealthy family in whose great Gothic house he takes residence, he marries the eldest daughter and makes a professional alliance with a tutor of the children — a severe and exciting young woman who burns with ethical and sexual passion. The ugly gray pile seems haunted by the withdrawal of divine beneficence from the natural order, or by some dirty secret.
In English
1997
The White Balloon
This beguiling Iranian film provides an intimate look at another culture. It is about the misadventures of a little girl, Razieh, who loses the money she needs to buy a pet goldfish while on an excursion to the marketplace. The setting is Tehran on the eve of the Persian feast of Nowruz, celebrating the spring equinox. A simple film with a happy ending, but it does have an edge — some of the men in the market treat Razieh with amazing gruffness, and it is subtly implied that her father (only heard screaming from inside the family home) is a brute. Director Jafar Panahi won the prize for Best First Feature at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.
In Farsi
1997
Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker
The story of a beautiful young woman at the turn of the century who is the sole heiress to a family fireworks business in an isolated northern village on the Yellow River. Forced to suppress her femininity and rule the family business in an iron-fisted style, nobody messes with her. One day a handsome itinerant artist happens by, hired to paint traditional religious symbols on the doors of her factory. It is clear from the start that the passionate artist has awakened desire in the hardhearted, repressed Chun Zhi — and that it is going to result in love fireworks somewhere along the way.
In Mandarin
1997
Lone Star
In the new mystery/romance/civics lesson from writer-director John Sayles, Kris Kristofferson plays a corrupt Texas sheriff, Charley Wade. Four decades ago, Wade ran his town with an itchy trigger finger. Now, his sun-bleached skull has been found in the desert. Current sheriff Sam Deeds wants to solve this old crime for personal reasons — his late father was Wade's deputy. Sayles has surrounded him with interesting characters and has warmed Lone Star with a glow of humanist optimism rare in contemporary movies. Sayles's most accessible film, and many consider it his best.
In English & Spanish
1997
Cold Comfort Farm
A cheeky adaptation of Stella Gibbons' darkly funny 1932 novel about an unflappable London girl called Flora (Kate Beckinsale) and her eccentric relatives who populate a decrepit farm. A truly benevolent busybody, the orphaned and penniless but irresistibly civilized Flora transforms the misery and squalor of her overwhelmed rural kin, the Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm, when she moves in with them. Director John Schlesinger has created a perfect, burnished little world, and the delectable cast has a great time with Malcolm Bradbury's zingy script.
In English
1997 – 1998 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:00 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $25.00
1997
La Promesse
This thoughtful, powerful drama focuses on a 15-year-old boy whose promise to a grieving widow pits him against his father, a ruthless exploiter of immigrant labor. Stunningly acted and vividly directed by Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The directors, who found their inspiration in The Brothers Karamazov, have devised a fluid and edgily mobile film about a boy's moral awakening that is thoroughly engrossing, totally convincing, and almost archetypical. La Promesse believes that decency is an innate human quality that can surface from any rubble.
In French
1997
Kolya
Not long before the fall of the Soviet bloc and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, a middle-aged Czech musician agrees to a marriage of convenience with a Russian woman, then finds himself caring for her 5-year-old son after she unexpectedly leaves the country. This moving, endearing film depicts the mutual fondness that develops between the surrogate father and his adopted offspring. Winner of the 1996 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
In Czech & Russian
1997
Ulee's Gold
In middle age, Peter Fonda gives the performance of his life as Ulee Jackson, a Florida beekeeper in his mid-50s struggling to keep his family together. Ulee's profession is harvesting the sweetest honey from swarms of bees; his power lies in his willingness to face forces that sting. As he rescues his drug-addict daughter-in-law, leading him into confrontation with his son's underworld past, his journey becomes a blind lunge toward grace. Fonda hypnotizes the camera with a gaze that calls up a bottomless well of anger, yearning, and loss.
In English
1998
A Mongolian Tale
Xie Fei's beautiful film is a deceptively simple tale of love and loss, redemption and forgiveness. With dreamy tranquility, it tells of two children raised in an idyllic paradise — childhood sweethearts who are separated by their adult destinies. There is a poetic quality, combined with a novel's depth of characterization, that makes this a memorable experience: superbly acted, gorgeously photographed, and plaintively scored. Like Sling Blade, this film unfurls with such direct emotion and narrative drive that it feels like a universal piece of folklore or even a Bible story.
In Mongolian
1998
Brassed Off
When all else is lost, there's always the flugelhorn. Brassed Off is the enjoyable study of the effect of brass-band music on a depressed mining community in the north of England. Pete Postlethwaite stars as bandleader Danny. Set during the Thatcher-era coal-mine closings, the miners have too many mouths to feed and too little job security — it is the music that keeps them alive. The movie is loosely based on a real-life colliery band whose members appear as extras, but it never tires of the delicious incongruity of working stiffs playing Rossini.
In English
1998
Shall We Dance?
The rage for ballroom dancing in Japan is the subject of this year's box office sensation in Japan. At the start of this moving comedy-drama, a Japanese businessman goes to a ballroom dancing school so furtively he might be visiting a bordello. In Japan, ballroom dancing is regarded with much suspicion. Yet 42-year-old Shohei Sugiyama is so unsatisfied by his wife, child, house, car, and accounting job that he desperately needs a change of pace. The film holds forth the sunny possibility that beyond the most timid exterior there may be a tangoing Walter Mitty to be found.
In Japanese
1998
La Cérémonie
This slyly unsettling thriller focuses on two working-class women who develop dangerous hostility toward the well-heeled household where one of them is employed. Claude Chabrol, the most Hitchcockian of all French directors, carries the absorbing story from a tantalizing start to a disturbingly violent climax. This small-scale masterpiece is part Heavenly Creatures and part Upstairs, Downstairs, with a dash of Jean Genet's The Maids tossed in for good measure. The extraordinary cast includes Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Bonnaire, and Jacqueline Bisset.
In French
1998
Gabbeh
The first film by Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf to be released in this country, it's a work of dazzling visual brio — a love story in which the images, at once playful and poetic, express an enraptured romantic temperament rooted in the power of folklore. An old rural couple engage in the daily washing of their gabbeh, a sacred rug that pictures the tale of their courtship more than 40 years before. A beautiful maiden — the old woman when she was young — rises out of the rug to relive the story of how she was carried away by a horseman who wooed her with wolf calls. Makhmalbaf draws his visions from the primal colors of the landscape and from the rituals of Iran's nomadic culture.
In Farsi
1998
Ponette
Fresh, attentive, and powerfully emotional, this French film is an attempt to enter the world of a 4-year-old girl whose mother has just been killed in a car accident. Ponette, as played by pudgy, sad-eyed Victoire Thivisol (winner of a Best Actress award at the 1996 Venice Film Festival), is one of the few credible children ever to inhabit a motion picture. The rolling landscape that extends for Elysian miles behind the characters shifts from green to brown over the course of the film, suggesting the presence of death in life and also the cycle of the seasons that will allow life and love to return.
In French
1998 – 1999 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:00 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $30.00
1998
Love and Death on Long Island
One of the most distinctive and intriguing movies of 1998. It observes the comic-romantic reawakening and misadventures of a reclusive, oblivious author, improbably named Giles De'Ath and splendidly impersonated by John Hurt. Blundering into the movies, Giles is enchanted by teen favorite Ronnie Bostock (Jason Priestley), then embarks on a pilgrimage to Long Island. The allusions to Thomas Mann's Death in Venice are deliberate but lead in a more benign and conciliatory direction. There has never been an "odd couple" situation quite this eccentric, suspenseful, and wistful.
In English
1998
Character
Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, this Dutch drama oozes with feelings of spite and revenge that grow up between a father and the son he had out of wedlock. It is dark, bitter, and fascinating — about hatred so deep that it can only be ended with a knife. It evokes the darker episodes of Dickens and, in its focus on the grind of poverty and illegitimacy, reflects the twisted stories of family secrets by the grim Victorian, George Gissing. Essentially the story of a young man growing up and making good by pluck and intelligence, but all of his success comes out of the desire to spite his father.
In Dutch
1998
Beaumarchais, the Scoundrel
A star-studded French costume biography of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, the 18th-century creator of The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville, whose life and work — in the grand, giddy view of this movie — anticipates the impending French Revolution. Beaumarchais is revealed as a shameless lover; a man of the people who declaims the Court of Lords to rapturous popular applause; a secret emissary from Louis XV; and a satirist sent to jail for his biting plays. Played with great delicacy by Fabrice Luchini.
In French
1999
Ma Vie en Rose
Childhood transvestism could hardly look more dignified than in the regally poised figure of Georges DuFresne, the extraordinary young French actor who plays 7-year-old Ludovic Fabre. By the end of this serious comedy — winner of the 1998 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film — Ludovic's insistence that he's a girl has endangered his parents' marriage, cost his father his job, and forced the family to move out of the buttoned-down French suburb where they have become pariahs. In treating a heavy subject so lightly, Ma Vie en Rose is cheekily subversive of orthodox psychology.
In French
1999
Western
Winner of the 1997 jury prize at Cannes, this warmly comic, tender-hearted road movie follows two French-speaking foreigners covering a brief stretch of Brittany and forging an unlikely friendship. Paco, a Spanish traveling shoe salesman, has his life turned upside down when he picks up a young Russian hitchhiker who looks like a runty, hapless version of the young Bob Dylan. These two almost child-like men go on the road in search of women. Director Manuel Poirier is concerned with the arbitrary, transitory nature of life. For all its seductive coziness, this film is about travelers who feel like foreigners wherever they go.
In French
1999
Men with Guns
John Sayles is the most courageous and decent storyteller working in American films today. What he dares to do, in the wake of Lone Star, is to present an allegory about war and responsibility in an unnamed Latin American country. No Hollywood star power here, and there's more dialogue in Nahuatl, Tzotzil, Maya, and Kuna than in English. But Sayles's strong, deliberately paced story of how an elderly doctor awakens to the ways of guerrilla warfare is crystal clear.
In Spanish & indigenous languages
1999
Guelwaar
A rare opportunity for American filmgoers to encounter a cinematic masterpiece that is about Africans, by an African, set and filmed in Africa. From noted Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène, Guelwaar — which means Noble One in Sembène's native tongue — refers to Pierre Henri Thioune, a village leader and devout Catholic who led his people against Western aid, which he believed only entrenched Africa's dependency and poverty. A radical theologian, philandering husband, gifted public speaker, and imposing presence, Guelwaar is a complex man who leaves an even more complicated legacy when he is killed.
In French & Wolof
1999
Marius and Jeannette
This French love story is also a romance in a larger sense. The filmmaker's respect and affection for Marseille's working-class people, who reflect his own roots there, give this neighborly film its strong, hearty, down-to-earth spirit. The characters — including a sweet, feisty heroine played by the filmmaker's wife, who won one of the film's several Césars — are filled with a joie de vivre that transcends their tough circumstances. The film watches them share warm friendships and populist ideas drawn from their daily experience. It's no surprise that Frank Capra is director Guédiguian's filmmaking hero.
In French
1999
The Best Man
Nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, this bittersweet romantic comedy is set in the tradition-laden end of the 19th century. Italian star Diego Abatantuono plays the closed-mouthed, macho Angelo who returns to Italy after making his fortune in America to serve as best man at a friend's wedding on New Year's Eve 1899. The bride in this arranged marriage is the stunningly beautiful Francesca (Inès Sastre), who pines for true love. When her eyes meet Angelo's at the altar, it's love at first sight — but she has already said "I do," and the evening that follows is a disaster. Director Pupi Avati's observations of the family's quirky social interaction and superstitious Catholic wedding traditions are the most charming parts of the film.
In Italian
1999 – 2000 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $30.00
1999
Central Station
Against her nature, Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) — an intelligent but nihilistic retired schoolteacher who writes letters for illiterate people and then never mails them — leaves Rio de Janeiro with a little boy in tow and takes to the road. The boy's mother has been killed, and his desire to see his missing father stirs something in Dora. The two of them are practically hoboes, but once they leave Rio, life opens up for them. This shrewd, tough, and big-hearted Brazilian movie, directed by Walter Salles, moves surely and convincingly from utter negation to something like guarded optimism.
In Portuguese
1999
The King of Masks
Wu Tianming's film is an eloquent, uncommonly wise modern fairy tale. Set in Sichuan province in the dark, desperate, famine-stricken 1930s, the film tells of an old Chinese entertainer and a homeless little girl who become partners in the quest for a reasonably contented life. The King of Masks speaks the simple, coded language of a fairy tale — like the world's greatest stories, the closer you look, the more it reveals. The acting is expressive and the cinematography dazzling.
In Mandarin
1999
The Dream Life of Angels
Isa (Élodie Bouchez), a free spirit who wanders around northern France with a rucksack, meets Marie (Natacha Régnier) in a clothing factory, and Marie offers her a place to stay. Erick Zonca's first feature is little more than the brief history of their friendship — what fires it up and takes it to the brink of greatness is not only that the director registers every tremor of his heroines' competing emotions but that the story travels so far. The film begins with a scuffed, documentary air that gradually deepens, almost without your noticing, into serene moments of epiphany.
In French
2000
After Life
When we say we "remember" something, what exactly is it we recall? A feeling? A smell? Words? Invited to relive an especially happy memory, how many of us could describe the setting and circumstances in precise detail? These and other profound questions are the substance of Hirokazu Kore-eda's brilliant, humorous, transcendently compassionate film. The setting is a homely old building where newly deceased people are asked to choose their most valued memory, which is then preserved by being filmed on a movie set. The premise builds delicate emotional power as it explores the lives and wishes of its ghostly "movie producers" and the people they're trying to serve.
In Japanese
2000
The Winslow Boy
A superbly acted, elegantly filmed adaptation of Terence Rattigan's classic 1940s drama about an aging Edwardian father who launches a drawn-out legal fight to clear his son's name after the boy is convicted of a petty crime. The subject remains as relevant as ever, touching on still-timely issues like feminist activism and media madness. David Mamet uses it to explore a wide range of moral complexities, imbuing the story with his own pungent rhythms while preserving the best elements of Rattigan's play. The kind of movie that literate viewers pine for — laced with gracefulness and wit from first scene to last.
In English
2000
The Inheritors
This mature and memorable work from writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky revolves around seven servants who inherit a farm when the much-loathed master is murdered. Making spectacular use of a young, theater-trained cast, Ruzowitzky's tale — an "Alpine western," he's called it — visually arresting and harrowingly acted, combines the feel of the 1960s Young German Cinema movement with the melodramatic flourishes of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the wry humor of Woody Allen. As the uneducated, terrified collective stands up to the machinations of the surrounding gentry, each internalizes the stress of freedom in his or her own way, resulting in a tragic ending that reaffirms their defiance.
In German
2000
Three Seasons
In this debut film of Vietnamese-American director Tony Bui, the lives of several people in Ho Chi Minh City are woven into a composite picture of life after the war — a cyclo driver, a middle-aged G.I. looking for his Vietnamese daughter, a young woman who writes down the verse of a leprous poet, and a little street kid who has lost his merchandise. The cinematography is lustrously beautiful, and the editing very fine. Bui, only 26, is a superb craftsman. Harvey Keitel has a role as a former Marine searching for a lost daughter.
In Vietnamese
2000
The Celebration
Danish newcomer Thomas Vinterberg's funny, volatile, visually dynamic story is about the unraveling of one extended family during the course of a patriarchal 60th-birthday celebration. It's at dinner for dear old Dad that one of his sons decides to confront the guest of honor about long-ago incest that contributed to the recent suicide of his twin sister. Working under a set of self-imposed restrictions meant to return filmmaking to a fundamental honesty, Vinterberg shows off dazzling ingenuity. Winner of a jury prize at Cannes.
In Danish
2000
Autumn Tale
Éric Rohmer's final installment in his Tales of the Four Seasons is as sublimely warming an experience as the autumn sun that shines benevolently on the vineyard owned by the film's central character, Magali (Béatrice Romand). The story involves a couple of rounds at matchmaking among two generations of friends in the French countryside. Although the women are now showing some tarnish on the once golden gleam of their youth, they are both still vain enough to remain somewhat coy and competitive when it comes to romance. In the end, though, it isn't the story but the telling that makes Autumn Tale such a rich, emotionally satisfying experience.
In French