Nice

Life really sucks for a group of gay and lesbian teenagers living in Los Angeles. Their parents kicked them out, they're broke and bored, their lovers cheat on them, they're harassed by gay-bashers. If things are going to be this way, maybe suicide isn't a bad idea; at least not in the mind of Andy, our major protagonist, who gives the film its title by describing himself as "totally fucked up."

A penniless street preacher spends his days giving out pamphlets and spreading the word of God. One day, he meets Sarah, a beautiful bereft hairdresser who lost her job. For Sarah, it is love at first sight. She follows the preacher home and tries to seduce him. Despite his deep attraction to her, he pushes her away. Oblivious to his rejection, Sarah continues to pursue the preacher, convinced that she can win him over.

Four separate stories of the auto-sexual proclivities of Chicagoans is presented. In the first story, a man, who is in a seemingly supportive relationship, is nonetheless self-conscious about what he considers the small size of his penis, regardless of his girlfriend telling him otherwise. His penis enlargement efforts lead to a change in attitude on many fronts. In the second story, a woman, who is in a supportive sexual relationship, has of late been turned on by everything, which leads to her feeling the need to masturbate whenever and wherever she can. After discussing the issue with a friend, she decides to take that sexual arousal to the next level by experimenting with auto-asphyxiation. In the third story, a pregnant woman, while still sexually aroused, can no longer come to orgasm through vaginal penetration. A female friend believes she can help her reach orgasm again, which the pregnant woman's husband allows. Although this experiment is solely to be between the two women, the husband can't help but want to be a part of the experience, even if the two women don't know. And in the final story, a man's primary sexual release is watching videos of him and an old girlfriend having sex. She, who is about to get married to someone else, reenters his life as she wants him to delete those videos. Wanting/needing a replacement for those videos, he asks her for one last "non-sexual"/non-video favor before she exits his life for good.

Two young lovers change their lives drastically after the 1968 revolt, leading to choices that move them in different directions.

Ruben (Nicolas Maury) is a French Jewish gay man (think Pee Wee Herman meets David Sedaris) living in a candy-colored world in Finland with his lover Teemu (Jarkko Niemi), where Ruben works as a postman. One fateful day three days before Passover, Ruben tries to deliver an envelope of euros to a widower, who refuses to accept it, and collapses on his lawn. Teemu and Ruben fight over what to do with the cash and Ruben heads to Paris to think, and to celebrate Passover with his mother (played by Carmen Maura). Back home, Teemu is trying to get to the bottom of things--or should we say the top?-- while Ruben discovers in Paris that a certain someone has missed Ruben more than he knew. Jean-Luc Bideau, Didier Flamand, and Jean-Christophe Bouvet appear; Bouvet as the Commissaire has to mediate a poignant love call from jail.

Théo and Hugo encounter each other's bodies in a sex club. They talk, things blur into the haziness of unbridled desire, then take shape for a moment as their gaze meets before they resume their exploration and lose themselves anew. A few moments later the two men feel the need to go outside. Together they drift down the deserted streets of nocturnal Paris. Suddenly they find themselves confronted by a sense of reality that wipes out their freedom and aimlessness and lends each step an existential helplessness. Do they want to know more about each other? Will their trust be rewarded? What are their expectations?

Murphy is an American cinema school student, living in Paris. He had a French girlfriend, called Electra, whom he dated for two years. One day, they met and had a no-strings-attached threesome with another woman, a young blonde Danish teenager named Omi, as a way to add some excitement to their love life. But later, he had sex with her behind Electra's back, as a result of which Omi became pregnant. This unplanned pregnancy ended the relationship between Murphy and Electra on a horrible note, and it forced Murphy to marry Omi. In one morning, Electra's mother, Nora, phones him to ask if he's heard from Electra, because she hasn't heard from her for three months, and given her daughter's suicidal tendencies. For the rest of this day, he recalls his past two years with Electra in a series of fragmented, nonlinear flashbacks; how they first met in Paris, their quick hookup, and their lives over the next two years which is filled with drug abuse, rough sex and tender moments.

Producer/director/cinematographer Andy Warhol presents an afternoon in a Manhattan apartment where Viva and Louis discuss social issues while lying in bed. Louis makes sexual advances and Viva giggles; they indulge in sexual foreplay and then intercourse. They talk about the Vietnam War, watch television, get dressed, eat, discuss Louis's unhappy marriage, and finally take a shower, more and more aware of the presence of a camera. After more sex play in and out of the shower, Viva stares at the camera and asks, "Is it on?"

Claire and Laura have been friends since primary school. Now, in their adult lives, with each happily married, to Gilles and David respectively, they are as close as ever. Then Laura dies after an illness and Claire's world is suddenly very empty. Being the godmother of Laura's child, Lucie, Claire visits David and Lucie, only to discover he has a startling secret...

Jeremie, a young man at his breaking point, leaves Paris to return to his intrusive mother in Limosin.

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.

Jeanne is a director struggling with a difficult sex scene between two actors who can't stand each other. Aided by her loyal assistant Leo, Jeanne is hell-bent on getting the scene right without compromise. Inspired by Breillat's own experiences (particularly those in "Fat Girl"), "Sex is Comedy" explores the comedy of social manipulations, sex and power that takes place within the confines of a film set.

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.

Joey, an unemployed ex-child actor, uses sex to get his landlady, Lydia, to reduce his rent, and then tries to exert his influence on Sally, who is now washed-up and wasn't even more than slightly important at the height of her career. She tries to help him, until he realizes that she just isn't well-connected enough to be of any service to him. The affair is complicated by Sally's psychotic, maybe-lesbian-or-maybe-not daughter Jessica, who tries to muscle in on her mother's relationship with Joey.

In the midst of rehearsals for a new play, amateur dramatics proponents Colin and Kathryn receive the shattering news that their friend George is fatally ill and only has a few months to live.

Numerous New York City dwellers come to the exclusive club Shortbus to work out problems in their sexual relationships. Rob and Sophia are a happily married couple, except for the fact that she has never experienced sexual climax. This irony follows her to work because she is a couples counselor who frequently has to deal with the sexual issues other couples have. Two of her patients are Jamie and James, a gay couple who have been monogamous for five years and counting. James wants to bring other men in to the relationship, and his own history with depression may hint at an ulterior motive. Ceth (pronounced Seth) may be the perfect addition to their family, but Caleb, a voyeur from across the street, may have his own ideas about that. Sophia visits Severin, a dominatrix with secrets of her own to reveal.

A portrait of young New York and the misguided hopefuls who can't afford to live there but do anyway, Gabi on the Roof in July is an ensemble comedy about ex-girlfriends, sibling rivalry and whipped cream in a city that's constantly in flux. Gabi, a rambunctious Oberlin undergrad, heads to New York City to spend the summer with her older brother, Sam, seeking solidarity in the wake of her parents' divorce. When she gets there, she finds Sam too busy juggling women and too irked by her provocative antics and almost constant nudity to give her the guidance she needs. In an effort to get Sam's attention, Gabi seduces his free-loving, freeloading college buddy, only to find she's in over her head.

Bertrand Morane's burial is attended by all the women the forty-year-old engineer loved. We then flash back to Bertrand's life and love affairs, told by himself while writing an autobiographical novel. A film about romantic relationships, the need to charm, and the literary creation.