Lists and Suggestions

France, 1760. Marianne is commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young woman who has just left the convent. Because she is a reluctant bride-to-be, Marianne arrives under the guise of companionship, observing Héloïse by day and secretly painting her by firelight at night. As the two women orbit one another, intimacy and attraction grow as they share Héloïse first moments of freedom. Héloïse portrait soon becomes a collaborative act of and a testament to their love.

"With this furiously witty comedy of manners, Katharine Hepburn revitalized her career and cemented her status as the era's most iconic leading lady--thanks in great part to her own shrewd orchestrations. While starring in the Philip Barry stage play The Philadelphia Story, Hepburn acquired the screen rights, handpicking her friend George Cukor to direct. The intoxicating screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart pits the formidable Philadelphia socialite Tracy Lord (Hepburn, at her most luminous) against various romantic foils, chief among them her charismatic ex-husband (Cary Grant) who disrupts her imminent marriage by paying her family estate a visit, accompanied by a tabloid reporter on assignment to cover the wedding of the year (James Stewart, in his only Academy Award-winning performance). A fast-talking screwball comedy as well as a tale of regret and reconciliation, this convergence of golden-age talent is one of the greatest American films of all time"--Container.

Revolving around the changing of the seasons, The Makioka sisters follows the lives of four sisters who have taken on their family's kimono manufacturing business, over the course of a number of years leading up to the Pacific War. A graceful study of a family at a turning point in history, and a poignant evocation of changing times and fading customs.

The colorful, electrifying romance that took the Cannes Film Festival by storm courageously dives into a young woman's experiences of first love and sexual awakening. Blue is the Warmest Color stars the remarkable newcomer Adèle Exarchopoulos as a high schooler who, much to her own surprise, plunges into a thrilling relationship with a female twentysomething art student, played by Léa Seydoux. Directed by Adbellatif Kechiche, this finely detailed, intimate epic sensitively renders the erotic abandon of youth. It has captivated international audiences and been widely embraced as a defining love story for the new century.

Set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars of the late eighteenth century. Emma Hart is a beautiful dance hall girl who is sent by her latest lover to stay with his uncle Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador to Naples. Sir William considers Emma a rare piece of art he must possess. Sir William introduces Emma to Naples' elite society and she soon marries him. Later, Horatio Nelson, a famous English Naval office arrives. Soon, a scandalous, adulterous affair between the British Royal Navy officer and the renowned beauty, Emma begins.

"In this Oscar-winning farce, Cary Grant (in the role that first defined the Cary Grant persona) and Irene Dunne exude charm, cunning, and artless affection as an urbane couple who, fed up with each other's infidelities, resolve to file for divorce. But try as they might to move on, the mischievous Jerry can't help meddling in Lucy's ill-matched engagement to a corn-fed Oklahoma businessman (Ralph Bellamy), and a mortified Lucy begins to realize that she may be saying goodbye to the only dance partner capable of following her lead. Directed by the versatile Leo McCarey, a master of improvisation and slapstick as well as a keen and sympathetic observer of human folly, The Awful Truth is a warm but unsparing comedy about two people whose flaws only make them more irresistible"--Container.

"A trio of Americans in Paris who enter into a very adult 'gentleman's' agreement, in this continental pre-Code comedy freely adapted by Ben Hecht (Notorious) from a play. A risque relationship comedy and a witty take on creative pursuits, it concerns a commercial artist unable, or unwilling, to choose between the equally dashing painter and playwright she meets on a train en route to the City of Light.

Majesty gives way to mystery, and marks a harrowing descent into madness, when a young British nun is ordered to establish a convent in the remote Himalayan mountains. Sister Clodagh (Kerr) is a serious young novitiate assigned to lead a crucial mission, with the reluctant recommendation of her Mother Superior. Together with a disparate group of nuns, Sister Clodagh will face strange peoples and customs, a harsh and unforgiving climate and a wrenching struggle with her own past that will prove the ultimate test of her devotion and faith.

A master of intensely emotional human dramas, director Lee Chang-dong is a leading light of contemporary Korean cinema, and his place on the international stage was cemented by this stirring and unpredictable work examining grief and deliverance. An effortless mix of light and uncompromising darkness, Secret Sunshine is the story of a widowed piano teacher who moves with her young son from Seoul to her late husband's provincial hometown for a fresh start.

It bridges past and present in its tragic romance between a humble courtesan and the wayward scion of a wealthy family, who embrace death by suicide pact amid the opulent teahouses of 1930s Hong Kong. Fifty years later, she returns to the city-state to find him, drawing a young contemporary couple into her quest to rekindle a passion that may be as illusory as time itself. With its lush mise-en-scn̈e and transcendently melancholy mood, this sensuous ghost story is an exquisite, enduringly resonant elegy for both lost love and vanishing history.

"While vacationing on a remote island retreat, a family's already fragile ties are tested when Karin discovers her father has been using her schizophrenia for his own literary means. As she drifts in and out of lucidity, her father, husband, and younger brother are unable to prevent Karin's harrowing descent into the abyss of mental illness."--Container.

The plot follows actress Pepa, who, after her lover Iván leaves without explanation, sets out to find the reason, and comes across an array of eccentric characters, including Iván's son from a previous relationship and her best friend Candela, who has been held captive by a Shiite terrorist cell.

A documentary of the Rolling Stones' 1969 tour of the United States, focusing on a free concert at the Altamont Speedway in California where a young man was killed during violence between the crowd and the Hell's Angels hired to "keep order." A disturbing portrait of one aspect of the rock and drug culture of the late 60's.

Carol White is an L.A. housewife in the late 1980s who comes down with a debilitating illness. After the doctors she sees can give her no clear diagnosis, she comes to believe that she has frighteningly extreme environmental allergies. A prescient commentary on self-help culture, as a metaphor for the AIDS crisis, as a drama about class and social estrangement, and as a horror film about what cannot be seen.

In a dusty, under-populated California resort town, Pinky Rose, a naive and impressionable Southern waif begins her life as a nursing home attendent. There, Pinky finds her role model in fellow nurse Millie, a misguided would-be sophisticate and hopeless devotee of sophisticated ladies magazines. But Pinky's hero-worship evolves into something far stranger and more sinister than could be imagined.

When thief Gaston Monescu meets his true love in pickpocket Lily, they embark on a scam to rob lovely perfume company executive Mariette Colet. But when Gaston becomes romantically entangled with Mme. Colet, their larcenous ruse is jeopardized and Gaston is forced to choose between two beautiful women.