L'École des cocottes

The doomed marriage of the Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick.

A sensitivity to sounds coming from the activities of an unwelcome guest in the close quarters of an apartment is only one important component in this atmospheric, avant-garde drollery by Chantal Akerman. When the apartment owner comes home, her guest is settled in and at first, the slightly reclusive host decides simply to eat her breakfast in her room instead of having to face morning conversation with her guest. Sounds of the toilet flushing, the bath water running and splashing, footsteps pacing, and furniture moving invade the hostess' refuge in her bedroom like the frontrunners of an all-out offensive. She locks herself up for 28 days, life's detritus accumulating around her, just so she does not have to go out to face the nemesis that lurks beyond her door.

The film tells a strange story, in flashback, about a British Telegraph Company’s engineer named Hughes appearing in a distant Guria village. Falling in love with the beautiful Anna, the Englishman became the enemy of her brother, Bolshevik Nestor. Both Hughes and Nestor were shot dead by Lavrenty Mgeladze, who had once had everything, but later was dispossessed and driven out of the village. The old Anna told that story to a young composer who recorded the music: “My dear homeland, why are you weeping?…”

The ghosts of a middle-aged woman and a precocious little girl help an unwed jazz musician and a bar dancer reverse their bad fortune.

The movie examines the lives of the not-so-fortunate dregs of society through airy but uneven absurdist comedy. The unfortunates of the title are mentally challenged people, some of whom could be termed insane - or merely inane.

A man goes to see his former schoolmate working at a boiler house and persuades him to burn in the furnace the corpse of his communal flat neighbor whom he has just murdered after a quarrel. An orphaned girl gets a job in the archives of the maternity home to find out the identity of her mother who abandoned her years earlier. She finds her, befriends her and takes the first opportunity to throw her into the sea. An old intellectual tries to explain to the neighbor’s five-year-old daughter “all the abomination of her lumpen existence”. The girl feeling hurt for her mother decides to poison the old man with arsenic.

Family friends Sam and Kat spend every Christmas Eve at the Children's Table. They grow up together, sharing the highs and lows of young adulthood. And at thirty, Sam realizes that Kat is the one... but he's afraid that the past will get in the way.

When down-to-earth Alex says yes to her boyfriend's marriage proposal, she has no idea that her future-in-laws are none other than Mr. and Mrs. Claus.

A pretty psychiatrist is saved from an accident by a man who, after hitting his head on a rock, believes he is Santa Claus. As she nurses him back to health at her institute, he brings the spirit of Christmas to the hospital.

Ben and Julie's annual Halloween Party is about to go off the Richter scale, when their single, high maintenance girlfriend drags in a homeless guy, thinking he's a party goer, because SHE needs an escort. Not only has she dated everyone there; unbeknownst to her, Ben has invited her lame ex-boyfriend in hopes of reuniting them. As she spends the night avoiding her ex, and the other undesirable guys in attendance, she interacts with a colorful assortment of party peeps. Between disappearing fortune tellers and over crowded jacuzzis, she questions if real love is even possible. The irony; the only person she's the least bit attracted to, is the homeless man!

On Christmas weekend in a quaint Texas hotel, JOE BINGHAM, runs into the love of his life, AMY WALKER, the one that got away, she's visiting home for the holiday. The kick is, it's on the eve of Joe's white-winter wedding nuptials to DAISY SPUR, the girl next door who he's settling for. So, Joe has one night to find out if there's a chance he can get back together with Amy before he marries Daisy with no regrets.