obsession

At the beginning of the 20th century, Claude Roc, a young middle-class Frenchman meets in Paris Ann Brown, a young Englishwoman. They become friends and Ann invites him to spend holidays at the house where she lives with her mother and her sister Muriel, for whom she intends Claude. During these holidays, Claude, Ann and Muriel become very close and he gradually falls in love with Muriel. But both families lay down a one-year-long separation without any contact before agreeing to the marriage. So Claude goes back to Paris when he has many love affairs before sending Muriel a break-off letter...

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.

French teenager Isabelle is spending her summer holiday with her middle-class family in the south of France and decides to lose her virginity with German teenager Felix. Then she returns to Paris with her mother Sylvie, her stepfather Patrick and her younger brother Victor. Then Isabelle works as a call girl using the nickname Lea, meeting old men. She feels affection for her client Georges that is married with a daughter. When Georges dies from a heart attack while having sex with Isabelle in a hotel, she flees but the police investigate and identify her. The detectives in charge of the investigation disclose to Sylvie, who is devastated.

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.

Tomas is a doctor and a lady-killer in 1960s Czechoslovakia, an apolitical man who is struck with love for the bookish country girl Tereza; his more sophisticated sometime lover Sabina eventually accepts their relationship and the two women form an electric friendship. The three are caught up in the events of the Prague Spring (1968), until the Soviet tanks crush the non-violent rebels; their illusions are shattered and their lives change forever.

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.

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.

A common thief (Depardieu) breaks into the house of a professional dominatrix (Ogier), and begins to help her "train" her clients. Though this world is alien to his experience, he finds himself falling in love with her. Eventually he discovers that she does this in order to support her son, and he attempts to help her out of this life, which she is not sure she really wants to leave.

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.

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.

Lili, a pouty and voluptuous 14-year-old, is caravan camping with her family in Biarritz. She's self-aware and holds her own in a café conversation with a concert pianist she meets, but she has a wild streak and she's testing her powers over men, finding that she doesn't always control her moods or actions, and she's impatient with being a virgin. She sets off with her brother to a disco, latching onto an aging playboy who is himself hot and cold to her. She is ambivalent about losing her virginity that night, willing the next, and determined by the third. The playboy's mix of depression and misogyny ends their unconsummated affair, so Lili has to hunt elsewhere.

Set against Paris' oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf, while it was closed for repairs, this film is a love story between two young vagrants: Alex, a would be circus performer addicted to alcohol and sedatives and Michele, a painter driven to a life on the streets because of a failed relationship and an affliction which is slowly turning her blind. The film portrays the harsh existence of the homeless as Alex, Michele and Hans, an older vagrant survive on the streets with their wits. As they both slowly get their lives back together, Michele becomes increasingly dependent on Alex as her vision deteriorates further. Fearing that Michele will leave him if she receives a new medical treatment Alex attempts to keep Michele practically a prisoner. The streets, skies and waterways of Paris are used as a backdrop to the story in a series of stunning visuals which dominate the film.

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.

They recount their impressions to the Interviewer. They met through a magazine ad, She and He. They corresponded through the Internet. He responded to her ad seeking someone to fulfil her fantasy for "a pornographic affair". This is their first meeting in a Paris café. He's a little reticent. She wants to know whether or not he's hairy. (He is; he's Spanish.) They retire to a nearby hotel room. The door of the room closes. Unseen, the affair is consummated... They continue to see one another regularly each week. They find they get along well together. Soon she suggests that they try normal sex the next time...