obsession

Lucas has invented a new computer language but at the same time he has been informed about his strange terminal illness during which he has been gradually losing his memory. Shortly after that he meets Blanche who acts as a medium in a bizarre traveling show. Dying Lucas follows her to the sea resort where they spend together several days and nights.

Although deeply in love with her boyfriend - and indeed sleeping in the same bed with him - a schoolteacher cannot handle the almost complete lack of intimacy he will allow. Increasingly frustrated, she gradually finds her sexual appetites leading her into ever more risky situations, including a developing one with the headmaster.

Jay is a bartender who abandoned his family because his wife lost interest in him and their relationship. Now living alone in a decrepit house, he has casual weekly sex with an anonymous woman, whose name he does not know. At first, their relationship is purely physical, but he eventually falls in love with her. Wanting to know more about her, he follows her across the streets of London to the grey suburbs where she lives. He then follows her to a pub theatre where she works as an actress in the evenings. He learns that her name is Claire, and she is married to Andy has a son. Subsequently, it is made clear to him that she will not leave her family. They meet for a final time and have sex with an intimacy that has been missing during the illicit sex sessions of their previous encounters.

Four erotic tales from in various historical eras. The first, 'The Tide', is set in the present day, and concerns a student and his young female cousin stranded on the beach by the tide, secluded from prying eyes. 'Therese Philosophe' is set in the nineteenth century, and concerns a girl being locked in her bedroom, where she contemplates the erotic potential of the objects contained within it. 'Erzsebet Bathory' is a portrait of the sixteenth-century countess who allegedly bathed in the blood of virgins, while 'Lucrezia Borgia' concerns an incestuous fifteenth-century orgy involving Lucrezia, her brother, and her father the Pope.

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?

Caroline, Hélène and Dorothée are on vacation by the sea. A violent storm rises and they find themselves separated. In the morning, Caroline is spotted by a young man who leads her to a hut. A little later, she comes to herself, alone and naked in this hovel. She wears a dress that drags there, goes out and soon finds her friends. They are on the island. All three then approach a superb house where a young woman plays the piano. They arrive at the port and learn that the next boat for the continent does not leave until the next day. Without money, without lodging, they decide, under the impulse of Dorothée, to accept the proposals of three boys of the place, Max, Etienne and Raoul. Etienne is fascinated by Caroline whom he saved a few hours earlier. But she only thinks of the man in the villa. The three boys invite the three girls to extend their stay on the island and go with them to the mainland to collect their belongings before installing them in a comfortable little house. Max and Raoul assiduously court Hélène and Dorothée; Caroline will meet Jordan and his wife Julia, the pianist. The girl enjoys their company and refuses all of Etienne's advances. When Julia leaves to give a concert in Caracas, Caroline is delighted to stay with Jordan. And when we learn that Julia died in a plane crash, Caroline, to console Jordan, offers herself to him.

Nathalie is the name a Parisian prostitute assumes for a special mission or "private investigation." She is engaged in this unusual and secretive task by a professional, upper-middle-class wife who fears that her husband is unfaithful to her. Nathalie has to seduce the clueless husband and regularly report all details of her relationship with him, including his most intimate sexual preferences in bed. Nathalie is stunning, charming, and cunning. Can Nathalie and her reports to the mistrustful wife be trusted? Is the middle aged husband indeed unfaithful?

A woman and three men. Nina, who's come to Paris to act and sleeps with any man at hand, meets Paulot, a young estate agent; he's smitten. She also meets Paulot's flatmate Quentin, a compulsive who stalks her. To Paulot's jealous dismay, she's willing to sleep with Quentin, and wants Paulot's friendship. After a desperate act by Quentin, Nina and Paulot share a flat, but she still won't take him as a lover; instead, her energy goes into a production of "Romeo and Juliet" directed by a detached, intense man who becomes her father figure. Quentin's ghost taunts her, Paulot wants to end all contact, and the director plans to return to London. The art of the theater may be her only refuge.

Pierre, a young man of privilege whose anonymously-published novel is a hit and who is about to marry his beautiful blonde cousin Lucie, abandons everything when a brunette vagrant tells him her secret late one night in the woods: that she is his own sister Isabelle, abandoned by their father. Pierre breaks up with Lucie and leaves his doting mother to head for Paris with Isabelle, intent on knowing the dark side of human nature. He begins a novel, sending chapters to his publisher under a pseudonym and his relationship with Isabelle moves beyond the fraternal. In the winter, frail Lucie comes to live with them and family jealousies mount. Pierre might have discovered despair instead of truth.

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.

Stuck in a dysfunctional, suffocating marriage, middle-aged landscape architect Giulio has a chance encounter with fresh, alluring Florentine student Francesca. The physical attraction between the two strangers is as fascinating as it is irresistible--Giulio feels how it is to be loved and be young again; Francesca yearns for a meaningful relationship, and to experience the safety of true love. As a result, more and more, Giulio feels the insurmountable need to see the young seductress again and again, despite Francesca's connection to an old flame. Could Giulio be Francesca's missing father?

A disturbed actress seduces a photographer; they begin an affair. As her mental and physical health deteriorates, important questions are raised on love, caring, relationships, responsibility and moral choice, reaching the inevitable climax.

Martin is a middle-aged philosophy teacher in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Lacking direction or purpose in his life, he initiates an affair with Cécilia, a young artist's model who might have killed her former lover with the intensity of her sexual appetite. They share a purely erotic relationship as an intellectual abyss separates them. Before long, he needs to possess her and cannot resist a sharp descent into violent jealousy.

Sculptor Paul meets a former great love again after a long time -- but is much more impressed by her 15-year-old daughter, Laura, who looks like her mother when Paul was in love with her. Laura likes him very much too, but her jealous mother prevents any further contact. She allows him to make a sculpture of Laura, but only from photos.

A member of Parliament (Irons) falls passionately in love with his son's fiancée. They pursue their affair with obsessive abandon despite the dangers of discovery and what it would do to his complacent life and his son. Completely obsessed, he wants to give up his current lifestyle to be with her. She has no intention of allowing him to do this, preferring to have her marriage to the son as a cover. They are eventually discovered, and must deal with the damage. Based on the novel by Josephine Hart.

A coming of age story centering on the exploits of a young girl during summer vacation.

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....

Set in Cheg, France and in a social context deteriorated by a countrywide economic crisis, the life of several people are turned upside down after they meet Cecile, a character who symbolizes desire. She is a 20-year-old girl whose father recently died and she sets about to bury her grief by having sexual relations with various lovers of people that she knows and does not know. Chance is her boyfriend and a petty criminal who loves her, but he cannot satisfy her constant carnal desires. His friend, Chance whose girlfriend Alice refuses to have sex with is an auto mechanic. Cecile also gives advice to her friends about how and how not to pleasure men and women. Unable to find inner peace through various sexual encounters with Chance, Matt and even Alice, she finally discovers another path to healing.