Delphine Seyrig

"An upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined."--Container.

The third in the Antoine Doinel series, (first told in the film The 400 blows) and in many respects the autobiography of François Truffaut. After his dishonorable discharge from the army, Antoine embarks on a series of ill-fated jobs, finally settling on an amusing stint as a private dectective. In his ever-turbulent love life, he finds himself torn between an attractive, serious-minded young violinist and a glamorous, older married woman.

An ageless Countess and a beautiful young companion seduce a newlywed couple, unleashing a frenzy of sudden violence and depraved desire.

One night, a frightened Swiss soldier of fortune climbs into the bedroom of a young Bulgarian girl and soon deflates her romantic notions about love and valor. The bonus play is set in 1796 at an inn where Napoleon rests at the start of his conquest of Italy.

A man is convinced he met an enigmatic woman the previous year at the same location, and perhaps had a flirtation. A second man, possibly the woman's lover or husband, repeatedly intimidates the first man. Their relations unfold through flashback shards that never quite fit into place, their lives a hall of mirrors that never reveal a true self.

Several bourgeois friends planning to get together for dinner experience a succession of highly unusual occurrences that interfere with their expected dining enjoyment.

Two French beggars on their way to Spain's holy city of Santiago de Compostela meet stigmatic children, crucified nuns, and others on their pilgrimage.

The past of an antique shop owner and widow in Boulogne-sur-Mer comes back to haunt her when a former lover reenters her life. Meanwhile, her stepson is tormented by his own ghosts, related to his service in France's recently ended war in Algeria.

"In the revolutionary first decade of her filmmaking career, Chantal Akerman devoted herself to nothing less than the total resculpting of cinematic time and space. Journeying between Europe and New York City, Akerman forged a highly personal style that fuses avant-garde influences with deeply human expressions of alienation, desire, and displacement---themes that she would explore in a series of increasingly ambitious shorts, documentaries, and features...

"A widow's life becomes all the more complicated when she is reunited with a former lover. Meanwhile, her troubled stepson struggles to come to terms with the atrocities he witnessed as a soldier during the Algerian War"--Container.