The Artist and the Model
In occupied France in summer 1943, a world-weary famous sculptor finds the desire to work again with the arrival of a beautiful young Spanish refugee.
In occupied France in summer 1943, a world-weary famous sculptor finds the desire to work again with the arrival of a beautiful young Spanish refugee.
Jean Rochefort
Marc Cros
Aida Folch
Mercè
Claudia Cardinale
Léa
Götz Otto
Werner
Chus Lampreave
María
Christian Sinniger
Emile
Martin Gamet
Pierre
Mateo Deluz
Henri
In occupied France in summer 1943, a world-weary famous sculptor finds the desire to work again with the arrival of a beautiful young Spanish refugee.
Jean Rochefort and Aida Foch present quite an unique sort of love story here as he ("Cros") invites her ("Mercè") to sit for him as a muse for his sculpture. They met because his wife "Léa" (Claudia Cardinale) encountered the girl fleeing from the Nazis in the occupied part of France. She is aspiring to make it back home to Spain, bit is weak and penniless. As she poses for the elderly man, they enquire much of each other and begin to develop a bond that is entirely complementary to his marriage, but provides him with a long lost, invigorated, inspiration to create something beautiful from his block of marble. It's a slow burn, this, but somehow it manages to create a perfect framework for an evaluation of age, certainly, but also of beauty too. A beauty that is reflected on a more viscera level by the fact that Foch is naked for a great part of the film - even when not posing; but also of the beauty of the art and the craft of working the stone - something that the lighting team must take considerable credit for illustrating in an almost halo-like fashion. The dialogue is sparing but lively when it's there, and Cardinale delivers very well as the foil to the increasingly intense friendship between the two ostensibly polar opposites. The denouement wasn't quite what I was expecting, but it worked fittingly as this attractively photographed story of affection came to a close that offered a form of redemption for all.
Gentle and broken, a homeless man fights others on video for money but soon finds comfort in an unlikely friend and the lost diary of a young girl.
After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé comes before her king with an unreasonable demand. Beguiled by John the Baptist, and then scorned for the sake of his god, lascivious Salomé—encouraged by her mother, the vindictive, Herodias—commands that John be executed and his head delivered on a silver platter.
In a desperate attempt to reach Europe and crouched before an airstrip in Cameroon, a six-year-old boy and his older sister wait to sneak into the holds of an airplane. Not too far away, an environmental activist contemplates the terrible image of an elephant, dead and fangless. Not only do you have to fight against poaching, but you will also have to meet the problems of your newly arrived daughter from Spain. Thousands of kilometers to the north, in Melilla, a group of civil guards prepare to face the furious crowd of sub-Saharan people who have begun the assault on the fence. Three stories linked by a central theme, in which none of its protagonists know that their destinies are doomed to cross and that their lives will no longer be the same.
Dr. Alan Stone breaks new ground for treatment of the mentally ill through an experiment on three paranoid schizophrenic patients who believe they are Jesus Christ.
Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.
After being falsely accused of a terrible crime, Hector, a man with a neurological disability, goes to a secret prison. His goodness conquers the prisoners, who plan to prove their innocence.
A boozy lowlife tries to bury the truth about his crazy stepson's suspicious death, but a nosy newspaper columnist and the young man's mother complicate matters.
Ana and her two best friends, Maria and Paula, navigate life in their oppressive countryside village. Whilst their families struggle in the poppy fields harvesting opium, the girls try to grow alongside the creeping terror of their cartel oppressors.
A pair of twin brothers from East L.A. choose to live their lives differently and end up on opposite sides of the law.
A pro ball player with a substance abuse problem is forced into rehab in his hometown, finding new hope when he gets honest about his checkered past, and takes on coaching duties for a misfit Little League team