artsy films

The movie highlights ten years in the life of a literature teacher named Laurence who transforms himself into a woman after years of concealing his feelings. Her tremulous relationship with her family is further complicated by revealing herself to them while she struggles to find comfort with her significant other Frédérique. Though others may not initially accept or understand Laurence in her true form, those who knew her before her transformation still know her as Laurence, anyways.

This film explores a Parisian woman's descent into prostitution. The movie is comprised of a series of 12 "tableaux"-- scenes which are basically unconnected episodes, each presented with a worded introduction.

Paul is young, just demobbed from national service in the French Army, and disillusioned with civilian life. As his girlfriend builds herself a career as a pop singer, Paul becomes more isolated from his friends and peers ('the children of Marx and Coca Cola', as the credits announce) and their social and emotional politics.

A group of perfectly intelligent young people decide to react to society's cult of aimless, non-creative and non-responsible form intellect by living together in a community of "idiots". Their main activity becomes going out into the world of "normal" people and pretending to be mentally retarded. They take advantage of this situation to create anarchy everywhere they go and try by every possible means to make people annoyed, disturbed, miserable, ridiculous, angered, and shocked. The film starts as they recruit a new lost soul and introduce her to their megalomaniac leader.

In pre-WWI Paris, two friends, Jules (Austrian) and Jim (French), fall in love with the same woman, Catherine. But Catherine loves and marries Jules. When they meet again in Germany after the war, Catherine starts to love Jim - This is the story of three people in love, a love that doesn't affect their friendship, and about how their relationship evolves with the years.

1968 and 1969 in Paris during and after the student and trade-union revolt. 20-year-old François is a poet dodging military service. He takes to the barricades, but won't throw a Molotov cocktail at the police. He smokes opium and talks about revolution with his friend Antoine, who has an inheritance and a flat where François can stay. François meets Lilie, a sculptor who works at a foundry to support herself, and they fall in love. A year passes; François continues to write, talk, smoke, and be with Lilie. Opportunities come to Lilie: what will she and François do?

Wong Chi-ming, a cold-blooded Hong-Kong-based assassin, has decided that he wants out. One last job stands in the way of a new life; however, Wong is unaware that his female partner-in-crime is utterly infatuated with him. Then, Wong has a late-night encounter with seductive Blondie in a fast-food restaurant, only to spark his obsessed partner's jealousy. Elsewhere in the city, mute Ho Chi-mo, who has recently escaped from prison, uses unorthodox ways to eke out an existence. During one of his nightly escapades, Ho crosses paths with Charlie, who enlists his help to find her ex-boyfriend's new lover. But, can there be redemption for the fallen angels?

In a story interspersed with interview tales of romantic pitfalls, friendship turns to romantic rivalry for gay man Francis and straight woman Marie when a veritable Adonis named Nicolas enters their lives. Sexual tensions mount as Francis and Marie await Nicolas' show of preference.

In Paris, Alexandre, an unemployed young man with memories of the May 1968 events in France, attempts to persuade his former love, Gilberte, to marry him. Gilberte opts to instead marry another man. Alexandre is involved with a live-in girlfriend called Marie, and is interested in films such as The Working Class Goes to Heaven. One day, after an unsuccessful reconciliation with Gilberte at the highly popular Les Deux Magots café, he meets Veronika, a Polish French twenty-something nurse. In the midst of the sexual revolution, Veronika is highly promiscuous, and begins to make advances on Alexandre. During the summer of 1972, Alexandre and Marie are nude in bed in their apartment when Veronika visits. Marie lets her in and Veronika insults both of them, but acknowledges she is not pure herself. The three begin a ménage à trois and sleep in the same bed, with Veronika assuring Alexandre she and Marie both love him, and telling him to be more happy with his situation and life. Although Marie affirms her indifference to Alexandre's affairs, she quickly changes her mind when she sees how close he becomes to Veronika. This leads to a growing estrangement between her and Alexandre. As the three sit together, Veronika attempts to reassure Marie about her looks and body. Tearfully, Veronika speaks about how she believes no women are truly whores, and how love is meaningless unless it produces a child.

Zorg is a handyman working at the seaside in France, maintaining and looking after the wooden bungalows. He lives a quiet and peaceful life, working diligently and writing in his spare time. He is in love with Betty, a young woman who is as beautiful as she is wild and unpredictable. After a dispute with Zorg's boss, they leave and Betty finds a place to stay at her girlfriend's house. The girlfriend's lover owns an Italian restaurant and there they find a job. She is obsessed to try to get one of Zorg's books published, but it is rejected, which makes Betty fly into a rage. Suddenly, Betty's wild manners start to get out of control. Zorg sees the woman he loves slowly going insane. Is his love for Betty strong enough, if even if it comes to the worst?

Drama set in a repressed, deeply religious community in the north of Scotland, where a naive young woman named Bess McNeil meets and falls in love with Danish oil-rig worker Jan. Bess and Jan are deeply in love but, when Jan returns to his rig, Bess prays to God that he returns for good. Jan does return, his neck broken in an accident aboard the rig. Because of his condition, Jan and Bess are now unable to enjoy a sexual relationship and Jan urges Bess to take another lover and tell him the details. As Bess becomes more and more deviant in her sexual behavior, the more she comes to believe that her actions are guided by God and are helping Jan recover.

Just after boarding a train, much to the surprise of his fellow passengers, a man pours a bucket of water over a young girl on the platform. Over the next few hours he explains (and we see in flashback) how he became obsessed by her (so much so that he failed to notice that she was played by two different actresses, representing different sides of her personality), and how she tantalised him, but would never allow him to satisfy his desire for her...

Paris, je t'aime is about the plurality of cinema in one mythic location: Paris, the City of Love. Twenty filmmakers have five minutes each; the audience must weave a single narrative out of twenty moments. The 20 moments are fused by transitional interstitial sequences and also via the introduction and epilogue. Each transition begins with the last shot of the previous film and ends with the first shot of the following film, extending the enchantment and the emotion of the previous segment, preparing the audience for a surprise, and providing a cohesive atmosphere. There's a reappearing mysterious character who is a witness to the Parisian life. A common theme of Paris and love fuses all.

Karol (Polish) marries Dominique (French) and moves to Paris. The marriage breaks down and Dominique divorces Karol, forcing him into the life of a metro beggar and eventually back to Poland. However, he never forgets Dominique and while building a new life for himself in Warsaw he begins to plot.

Paris, spring 1968. While most students take the lead in the May 'revolution', a French poet's twin son Theo and daughter Isabelle enjoy the good life in his grand Paris home. As film buffs they meet and 'adopt' modest, conservatively educated Californian student Matthew. With their parents away for a month, they drag him into an orgy of indulgence of all senses, losing all of his and the last of their innocence. A sexual threesome shakes their rapport, yet only the outside reality will break it up.

At a weekend gathering, a man tries to convince a woman that they had met there and spent some time together the previous year. The woman has no recollection whatsoever of having met this man and is convinced that he is just making all of this up. The more the man talks about their activities the previous year however, the more convincing he becomes. The question remains however - did they meet previously or not?

Paris by night. Alex, 22, wants to become a filmmaker. He is fascinated by first times and his girlfriend, Florence, has just left him for his best friend, Thomas. First break-up, first attempted murder: Alex tries to strangle Thomas, but gives up and wanders the streets. That evening, Mireille, a girl from provincial France who has come up to Paris to make commercials, is left by her boyfriend. Alex witnesses this separation. These two tormented souls run into each other at a party....

Ferdinand Griffon, married to a wealthy Italian wife, has recently been fired from the television station where he worked. His wife forces him to go to a party at the home of her influential father, who wants to introduce him to a potential employer. Her brother brings babysitter Marianne Renoir to take care of their children. Feeling bored at the bourgeois party, Ferdinand borrows his brother-in-law's car to head home. He meets Marianne, who was his mistress five years ago and insists on calling him Pierrot, and offers to take her home. They spend the night together and he learns that she's involved in smuggling weapons. When terrorists chase her, they decide to leave Paris and his family behind and go on the run, on a crazy journey to nowhere.