Best Meta-Melodrama

In this adaptation of the Thomas Mann novel, avant-garde composer Gustav von Aschenbach (Sir Dirk Bogarde) travels to a Venetian seaside resort seeking repose after a period of artistic and personal stress. But he finds no peace there, for he soon develops a troubling attraction to Tadzio (Björn Andrésen), an adolescent on vacation with his family. The boy embodies an ideal of beauty that Aschenbach has long sought and he becomes infatuated. However, the onset of a deadly pestilence threatens them physically and represents the corruption that compromises and threatens all ideals.

Fruit vendor Hans cannot please his family. His mother harps on his failures. His wife is openly discontent. He must peddle produce to his beloved ex-girlfriend, and he is mocked by his customers for being shorter and fatter than his wife. He is withdrawn, crushed, and humiliated. He can not meet the high standards of his mother, he has to give up his job as a police officer when he gets involved with a prostitute in the office. He turns to drinking and violence, but his rage causes his wife and daughter to leave him. While desperately begging for their return, he suffers a debilitating heart attack. His family comes back, but Hans is unable to work and must hire help for his fruit stand. Hans' first employee is his wife's ex-lover, whom he fires for embezzling. He then hires a friend and hero from his legionnaire days, Harry, out of pity. Harry is hardworking, diligent, and clever. He turns Hans' business around and enlivens his home life. Harry's success also begins to displace Hans -- with his fruit stand, with his wife, and even with his child. Hans becomes useless, a nothing -- exactly what his mother, his wife, and those around him set him up to be.

Frau Kusters is preparing dinner late one seemingly-ordinary afternoon in her seemingly-ordinary kitchen in Frankfurt, Germany. She wants to add canned sausages to the stew; her annoying daughter-in-law thinks otherwise. But the point is moot: Mr. Kusters has murdered the personnel director at the soap factory where he works--and followed that by committing suicide.

Ten years after the war, West Germany's market economy is booming. Into an unnamed city that's rife with corruption comes a new building commissioner, Herr von Bohm, committed to progress but also upright. He's smitten by Marie-Louise, a single mother who's his landlady's daughter. Von Bohm does not realize she is also Lola, a singer at a bordello and the mistress of Schuckert, a local builder whose profits depend on von Bohm's projects. When von Bohm discovers Marie-Louise's real vocation and looks closely at Schuckert's work, will this social satire play out as a remake of "Blue Angel," a visit of Chekhov to West Germany, or an update of Jean Renoir's "Rules of the Game"?

Driven by the agony of unrequited love, slaughterhouse worker and married father-of-one Erwin Weishaupt summons up the courage to become Elvira. As a result, rejected by friends and family, desperate Elvira seeks solace in all the wrong places, exposing herself to vitriolic contempt and vicious ridicule. As pained Elvira meanders through the grim roads of Frankfurt with streetwalker Zora, struggling to survive in a faceless urban environment defined by brutality, loneliness, and despair, she retraces memories of her troubled past. Can she unearth something worth keeping?

A slow and poignant story of love and patience told via a dying mother nursed by her devoted son. The simple narrative is a thread woven among the deeply spiritual images of the countryside and cottage.

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.

The French naval ship, Le Vengeur, based out of Marseille, has just docked in Brest for an extended stay. The ship's captain, Lieutenant Seblon, can see the passion in his men, which can as easily manifest itself in violence as it can in sex. Seblon has in part become an officer to remain at arms length from his men, one of them, Querelle, with who he is secretly in love. Querelle goes to La Feria, a bar and makeshift whorehouse owned and operated by husband and wife Nono and Lysiane, one of the whores. La Feria is infamous and notorious as anyone wanting sex with Lysiane must first roll the dice with Nono, Nono winning meaning that he will get to sodomize the loser instead. At La Feria, Querelle is surprised to see his brother, Robert, who is Lysiane's current on-going sexual partner, and who did not have to go through the roll of the dice with Nono is his special position with Lysiane. That passion in Querelle extends to his brother, the two who share more than just a family resemblance. Outwardly, Querelle goes to La Feria as a place to sell opium. However, the opium may only be a pretense as Querelle is trying to discover who he is as a man. Everyone in this collective is also on a similar sense of discovery, some who may be more aware and open about their own thoughts about the lines between sex, desire and love, those who are not as open possibly feeling shame which leads to ways to deal with that shame. Including those already mentioned, this collective includes a local stone mason named Gilles who purports to desire Paulette, a young man named Roger, Paulette's brother, with who there is unspoken sexual tension with Gilles, and Mario who, at least in appearance, "polices" the activities at La Feria.

This story opens in 1938 in Rome, where Marcello has just taken a job working for Mussollini and is courting a beautiful young woman who will make him even more of a conformist. Marcello is going to Paris on his honeymoon and his bosses have an assignment for him there. Look up an old professor who fled Italy when the fascists came into power. At the border of Italy and France, where Marcello and his bride have to change trains, his bosses give him a gun with a silencer. In a flashback to 1917, we learn why sex and violence are linked in Marcello's mind.

Jorgos, a migrant worker from Greece, joins a group of young people in Munich usually hanging around. This foreigner incites hostility and jealousy among them, and he is insulted as a "Communist" and "Greek dog". After having been attacked, Jorgos talks to Maria of his wish to return home.

Working class and middle-upper class worlds come together in this interesting look at class conflict within the gay world from the German director Reiner Werner Fassbinder. Fassbinder plays Fox, he is working class, a former circus performer who wins the lottery of DM 500,000. His life starts to look up and doesn't have to struggle financially. Fox can now have the life and things that he has always wanted. He begins a new relationship with Eugen, creates a business partnership, and his life is looking bright. While he wants to climb up the social ladder, it isn't without turmoil, and being torn between his old working class roots, and the shiny new facade of middle class consciousness.

Margot, who lives in a comfortable middle-class apartment, fears that she is losing her mind after having her second child. Her husband Kurt, who is busy studying for an exam, does not understand her situation. Her mother-in-law and sister-in-law Lore are openly hostile to her. She resorts to Valium and drink and looks for sympathy, but to no avail.

Ricky is a cold-blooded U.S. German contract killer. After serving in Viet Nam, he returns to his home town of Munich to eliminate a few problem crooks for three renegade cops. He inspects his old neighborhood with his childhood accomplice Franz Walsch, and pays a short visit to his mother and doting brother. When Ricky asks the hotel clerk for a girl, one of the cops sends his girlfriend Rosa. However, she falls for the killer.

A wealthy couple, with a daughter Angela, a young teen who walks with crutches, tells each other they are off for the weekend on business (he to Oslo, she to Milan). Actually, both are meeting their lovers, and both go to the family's county home, Traunitz castle. Surprising each other, there's sophisticated laughter; they decide to continue as planned. Dinner, however, is interrupted by the arrival of Angela and her mute attendant, also named Traunitz. The next day, the child initiates a game of "Chinese roulette," in which one team tries to guess which of them the other team is thinking of by asking questions. The game has an edge of cruelty and the results are explosive.

In search of inspiration, the hopeful author, Wilhelm, sets out on a lonely journey of enlightenment with his encouraging mother's blessing, leaving behind him his hometown of Glückstadt. In high hopes of finding something to write, Wilhelm wanders about unknown and faceless towns; however, he is not alone. A weary old father and his silent teenage daughter; a well-known actress, and an Austrian wannabe poet become Wilhelm's companions in his never-ending quest to broaden his horizons; nevertheless, the fear of making one wrong move, and an inadvertent mistake seem to stand in the way of discovering his identity. Will Wilhelm find the truth and the miracle he seeks in the snow-capped summit of the Zugspitze?

With slicked-down hair and three-piece suits, dependable Herr Raab is a technical draftsman. He gets along with his colleagues although his boss wants him to go beyond technical cleanliness to problem solving. He's a dutiful husband; his wife's a social climber and pushes him to seek a promotion, but they also share sweet moments. He's a caring father, helping his son with homework. His parents visit; his mother criticizes his wife. Old School friends drop by, as do neighbors. Some comment on Raab's wife's expensive tastes. His promotion may be a long shot, especially after he gives a dull and tipsy toast at an office dinner. But why would Herr Raab run amok?

At a boarding school in the pre-war Austro-Hungarian Empire, a pair of students torture one of their fellow classmates, Basini, who has been caught stealing money from one of the two. The two decide that rather than turn Basini in to the school authorities, they will punish him themselves and proceed to torture, degrade, and humiliate the boy, with ever-increasing sadistic delight. As each day passes, the two boys are able to justify harsher treatment than previously given. Torless is a passive member of the group but observes rather than participates and frustrates the tormentors by dryly analyzing their behavior.

German journalist Philip Winter has a case of writer's block when trying to write an article about the United States. He decides to return to Germany, and while trying to book a flight, encounters a German woman and her nine year old daughter Alice doing the same. The three become friends (almost out of necessity) and while the mother asks Winter to mind Alice temporarily, it quickly becomes apparent that Alice will be his responsibility for longer than he expected. After returning to Europe, the innocent friendship between Winter and Alice grows as they travel together through various European cities on a quest for Alice's grandmother.