The Brown Bunny (2003)

Directed by
Vincent Gallo

Written by
Vincent Gallo

Bud Clay (Vincent Gallo), a motorcycle racer, undertakes a cross-country drive, following a race in New Hampshire, in order to participate in a race in California. All the while he is haunted by memories of his former lover, Daisy (Chloë Sevigny). On his journey he meets three women, but is unable to form an emotional connection with any of them. He first meets Violet (played by Anna Vareschi) at a gas station in New Hampshire and convinces her to join him on his trip to California. They stop at her home in order to get her clothes, but he drives off as soon as she enters the house.

Bud's next stop is at Daisy's parents' home, the location of Daisy's brown bunny. Daisy's mother does not remember Bud, who grew up in the house next door, nor does she remember having visited Bud and Daisy in California. Next, Bud stops at a pet shelter, where he asks about the life expectancy of rabbits (he is told about five or six years). At a highway rest stop, he joins a distressed woman, Lilly (played by Cheryl Tiegs), comforts and kisses her, before starting to cry and eventually leaving her. Bud appears more distressed as the road trip continues, crying as he drives. He stops at the Bonneville Speedway to race his motorcycle. In Las Vegas, he drives around prostitutes on street corners, before deciding to ask one of them, Rose (played by Elizabeth Blake), to join him for a lunch. She eats McDonald's food in his truck until he stops, pays her, and leaves her back on the street.

After having his motorcycle checked in a bike shop in Los Angeles, Bud stops at Daisy's home, which appears abandoned. He leaves a note on the door frame, after sitting in his truck in the driveway remembering about kissing Daisy in this place and checks in at a hotel. There, Daisy eventually appears. She seems nervous, going to the bathroom twice to smoke crack cocaine, while Bud waits for her, sitting on his bed. As she proposes to go out to buy something to drink, Bud tells her that, because of what happened the last time they saw each other, he doesn't drink anymore.

They have an argument about Daisy kissing other boys. At this point, Bud undresses Daisy and she performs fellatio on him. Once done, he insults her as they lie in bed, talking about what happened during their last meeting. Bud continuously asks Daisy why she had been involved with some men at a party. She explains that she was just being friendly and wanted to smoke pot with them. Bud becomes upset because Daisy was pregnant and it transpires that the baby died as a result of what happened at this party.

Through flashback scenes, the viewer understands that Daisy was raped at the party, a scene witnessed by Bud, who did not intervene. Bud explains to her that he did not know what to do and decided to leave the party. As he came back, he saw an ambulance in front of the house and Daisy explains to Bud that she is dead, having passed out prior to the rape and then choked to death on her own vomit. Bud awakens the next morning, alone; his encounter with Daisy was a figment of his imagination. The movie ends as Bud is driving his truck in California.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0330099/

Persona (1966)

AKA Persona

Director:
Ingmar Bergman

Writer:
Ingmar Bergman

Prelude

Persona begins with images of camera equipment and projectors lighting up and projecting dozens of brief cinematic glimpses, including a crucifixion, an erect penis, children in Halloween costumes, and a lamb. The last, and longest, glimpse features an emaciated boy who wakes up in a hospital next to several sleeping women, walking up to a blurry image of a woman's face and touching it.

Act I

A young nurse, Alma (portrayed by Bibi Andersson), is summoned by the head doctor and charged with the care of stage actress Elisabet Vogler (portrayed by Liv Ullman), who has, despite the lack of any diagnosed impairment, become mute. The hospital administrator (portrayed by Margaretha Krook) offers her own seaside cottage as a place for Alma to nurse Elisabet back to health. Though Elisabet is nearly catatonic when the film begins, she does react with extreme panic upon seeing Thích Quảng Đức's suicide on television, and laughs mockingly at Alma's radio soap opera. As the two women leave the hospital together, Sister Alma reads aloud a letter Elisabet's husband has sent her, which includes a photograph of her thin son.

Together in the administrator's cottage, Elisabet begins to relax, though she remains completely silent and non-responsive. Alma speaks constantly to break the silence, at first about books she is reading and trivial matters, then increasingly about her own anxieties and relationship with her fiancé, Karl-Henrik, who scolds her for lacking ambition -- "though not with my career, I suppose in some greater way." Alma constantly compares herself to Elisabet and begins to grow attached to her. As the act closes, Alma confesses to cheating on her fiancé in a menage a quatre with underage boys. Later she has sex with her fiance and says she got pregnant and that they had a child aborted. She is not sure how to process the abortion mentally. Elisabet is heard to say "You ought to go to bed, or you'll fall asleep at the table", but Alma either ignores her or dismisses it as a dream. Alma later asks Elisabet if she had spoken and she denies it.

Act II

Alma drives into town, taking Elisabet's letters for the postbox, but parks by the roadside to read what she wrote. She discovers that Elisabet has been analyzing her and laughing behind her back in letters to her husband. Alma returns distraught, breaks a drinking bottle on the footpath, and leaves the shards there to cut Elisabet. When Elisabet's feet start to bleed, her gaze meets Alma's knowingly, and the film itself breaks apart: the screen flashes white, scratch marks appear up and down the image, the sound rises and screeches, and the film appears to unwind as brief flashes of the prelude reappear for fractions of a second each.

When the film resumes, it is following Elisabet through the house with a thick blur on the lens. The image clears up with a sharp snap when she walks outside to meet Alma, who is weepy and bitter. At lunch, she tells Elisabet she has been hurt her by talking about her behind her back, and begs her to speak. When Elisabet does not react, the nurse flies into a rage and tells Elisabet "You are inaccessible. They said you were mentally healthy, but your sickness is the worst: you act healthily. You act it so well everyone believes it, everyone except me, because I know how rotten you are inside." Alma lifts a pot of boiling water intending to pour it on Elisabet. She only stops after hearing Elisabet say "No, don't." Alma explains that Elisabet wouldn't have spoken had she not feared death. Elisabet flees, and Alma chases her begging for forgiveness.

Act III

That night, Alma watches Elisabet sleep, analyzing her face and the scars she covers with makeup. She hears a man yelling outside, and finds Elisabet's husband, Mr. Vogler, in the garden. Mr. Vogler mistakes Alma for his wife, and despite her repeatedly interjecting with "I'm not your wife", delivers a monologue about his love for her and the son they have together (repeating words he wrote to Elisabet in the opening act -- "We must see each other as two anxious children"). Elisabet stands quietly beside the two, holding Alma's hand, and Alma admits her love for Mr. Vogler and accepts her role as the mother of Elisabet's child. The two make love with Elisabet sitting quietly to the side in a look of panic, and afterward, Alma cries. The image of Elisabet becomes blurry.

The climax of the film comes the next morning: Alma catches Elisabet in the kitchen with a pained expression on her face, holding a picture of a small boy. Alma then narrates Elisabet's life story back to her, while the camera focuses tightly on Elisabet's anguished face: at a party one night, a man tells her "Elisabet, you have it virtually all in your armory as woman and artist. But you lack motherliness." She laughs, because it sounds silly, but the idea sticks in her mind, and she lets her husband impregnate her. As the pregnancy progresses, she grows increasing worried about her stretching and swelling body, her responsibility to her child, the pain of birth, and the idea of abandoning her career. Everyone Elisabet knows constantly says "Isn't she beautiful? She has never been so beautiful", but Elisabet makes repeated attempts to abort the fetus. After the child is born, she is repulsed by it, and prays for the death of her son. The child grows up tormented and desperate for affection. The camera turns to show Alma's face, and she repeats the same monologue again. At its conclusion, one half of the face of Alma and the moiety of Elisabet's visage are shown in split screen such that they appear to have become one face. Alma panics and cries "I'm not like you. I don't feel like you. I'm not Elisabet Vogler: you are Elisabet Vogler. I'm just here to help you!" Alma leaves, and later returns, to find that Elisabet has become completely catatonic. Alma falls into a strange mood and gashes her arm, forcing Elisabet's lips to the wound and subsequently beating her. Alma packs her things and leaves the cottage alone, as the camera turns away from the women to show the crew and director filming the scene.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060827/

Three Colors: Red (1994)

AKA Trois couleurs: Rouge

Directed by
Krzysztof Kieslowski

Written by
Krzysztof Kieslowski
Krzysztof Piesiewicz

The film begins with clips that track a telephone call between London and Geneva, where a university student and part-time model, Valentine Dusot (Irene Jacob), is talking to her emotionally infantile and possessive boyfriend. During her work as a model she poses for a chewing-gum campaign and during the photo shoot the photographer asks her to look very sad. While walking back home Auguste, a neighbour of Valentine's, drops a set of books and he notices that a particular chapter of the Criminal Code was open at random and he concentrates on that passage. While driving back to her apartment Valentine is distracted by adjusting the radio which is emitting a strange signal and she accidentally runs over a dog. She tracks down the owner, a reclusive retired judge, Joseph Kern (Jean-Louis Trintignant). He seems unconcerned by the accident or the injuries sustained by Rita, his dog. Valentine takes Rita to a veterinarian, where she learns that Rita is pregnant. Valentine takes the dog home.

Whilst walking Rita the next day the dog runs away and Valentine eventually finds the dog back at Kern's house. He gives the dog to Valentine. A short time later Valentine finds Kern eavesdropping on his neighbours' private telephone conversations (possibly the cause of the disruptive signal on Valentine's radio). Valentine threatens to denounce Kern to his neighbours and initially goes to do so but then changes her mind. Kern tells Valentine that it shall make no difference that she denounces him for his spying, the people's lives he listens to shall eventually turn into hell. She leaves saying that she feels nothing but pity for him.

Whilst visiting Kern, Valentine hears a telephone conversation between her neighbour, Auguste, and his girlfriend, Karin (Frederique Feder). They discuss if they should go bowling. Valentine covers her ears but from the very little she hears she concludes that they love each other. Kern disagrees. That evening Valentine is alone at home and hopes that her boyfriend will call but it is the photographer who calls, saying that her poster was set up that evening and asks her bowling to celebrate. Later Auguste takes his exam and passes it and becomes a judge. Karin asks him if he was asked any questions regarding the article that was open when he dropped his books. Auguste says yes. Karin gives him a fountain pen as a gift and he wonders what the first judgment he signs with it will be. That evening, Kern writes a series of letters to his neighbours and denounces himself, and the community files a class action. At the law courts, he sees Karin meeting another man. Earlier Auguste had missed a call from Karin and tried to call her back but never hears from her again.

Valentine reads the news about a retired judge that spied on his neighbours and she goes to Kern telling him that she said nothing to anybody. He confesses that it was him just to see what she would do. He asks her in and shows her that Rita has had seven puppies. They discuss that on their last conversation she spoke about pity but he later realized that it was actually disgust. He wonders about the reasons why people obey laws and it turns out that often it is more on selfish grounds and from fear than about obeying the law or being decent. It is his birthday and they have a couple of drinks. During their conversation he reminisces about a sailor he acquitted a long time ago, only later realizing he had made a mistake, and that the man was guilty. However the man later married and had children and later grandchildren and lives peacefully and happy. Valentine says that he did what he had to do, but Kern wonders how many other people that he acquitted or condemned might have seen a different life had he decided otherwise. Valentine tells Kern about her intended trip to England to visit her boyfriend. Kern suggests that she take the ferry.

Auguste has been unable to reach Karin since graduation so he goes to her place and sees her having sex with another man. Distraught, he leaves. On another occasion, Auguste sees Karin and her new boyfriend in a restaurant, he gets her attention but when she rushes outside to try to explain he hides from her. In a temper, he ties his dog by a quayside and abandons it.

Karin is employed to provide a personalised weather service by telephone. Kern calls this and enquires about the weather in the English Channel for when Valentine travels to England. Karin states that she expects the weather to be perfect and reveals that she is about to take a trip there (with her new boyfriend who owns a boat).

The day before Valentine leaves, she invites Kern to a fashion show where she is modeling. After the show they speak about the dream Kern had about her, where he saw her at the age of 40-50 years old and happy with an unidentified man. The conversation then turns to Kern and the reasons why he disliked Karin. Kern reveals that before becoming a judge, he was in love with a woman very much like Karin, who betrayed him for another man. While preparing for his exam, he once went to the same theatre where the fashion show took place and he accidentally dropped one of his books. When he picked it up, Kern studied the chapter where the book accidentally opened, which turned out to be the crucial question at his examination. When he broke up with his girlfriend he followed her across the English Channel but never saw her again, because she died in an accident. Later, he was assigned to judge a case where the defendant was the same man who took his girlfriend from him. Regardless of this connection, Kern did not recuse himself from the case, since the connection was only known to him, and condemned the man, the judgment was legal but he subsequently resigned his post.

Valentine takes her ferry to England, and Auguste is also on the ferry, clutching the dog he had abandoned, although the two never quite meet each other. Suddenly a storm rises and sinks both the ferry and the boat with Karin and her boyfriend. Only seven survivors are pulled from the ferry: the main characters from the first two films of the trilogy, Julie and Olivier from Blue, Karol and Dominique from White, and Valentine and Auguste, who meet for the first time, as well as an English bartender named Stephen Killian. As with the other films, the film's final sequence shows a character crying - in this case, the judge - but the final image replicates the iconic chewing-gum poster of Valentine.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111495/

Three Colors: White (1994)

AKA Trzy kolory: Bialy

Directed by
Krzysztof Kieslowski

Written by
Krzysztof Kieslowski (scenario)
Krzysztof Piesiewicz (scenario)
Agnieszka Holland (scenario collaborator)
Edward Zebrowski (scenario collaborator)
Edward Klosinski (scenario collaborator)
Marcin Latallo (dialogue translation)

After opening with a brief, seemingly irrelevant scene of a suitcase on an airport carousel, the story quickly focuses on a Paris divorce court where Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) is pleading with the judge — the same legal proceedings that Juliette Binoche's character briefly stumbled upon in Blue. The immigrant Karol, despite his difficulty in understanding French, is made to understand that his wife Dominique (Julie Delpy) does not love him. The grounds for divorce are humiliating: Karol was unable to consummate the marriage. Along with his wife, he loses his means of support (a beauty salon they jointly owned), his legal residency in France, and the rest of his cash in a series of mishaps, and is soon a beggar. He only retains a 2 franc coin.

In a Paris Métro station, performing songs for spare change, Karol meets and is befriended by another Pole, Mikołaj (Janusz Gajos). While Karol has lost his wife and his property, Mikołaj is married and successful, he offers Karol a job consisting of killing someone who wants to be dead but does not have enough courage to do it himself. Through a hazardous scheme, Mikołaj helps him return to Poland hidden in the suitcase shown at the beginning of the film, which is later stolen by employees at the airport. He returns to working as a hairdresser with his brother (Jerzy Stuhr).

Karol takes a job as a bodyguard in a seemingly innocent cash exchange office. Mikołaj meets Karol in a Warsaw Metro tunnel for the execution of the "suicide", it turns out to be that Mikołaj is the intended victim and asks Karol to kill him. Karol shoots a blank into Mikołaj's chest and asks him if he really wants to go through with it as the next bullet is real. Mikołaj refuses and is able to feel alive again. Using his position as a deceptively foolish bodyguard, Karol spies on his bosses and discovers their scheme to purchase different pieces of land that they knew were going to be targeted by big companies for development and resell for large profits. Karol beats them to it, and then tells his ex-bosses that if they kill him all his estate shall go to the Church, and they are therefore forced to purchase all the land from him.

With the money he gained from this scheme and with the payment from Mikołaj, the two go into business (of a vaguely defined but possibly illegal nature) together. Karol becomes ruthlessly ambitious, focusing his energies on money-making schemes while learning French and brooding over his wife's abandonment. He uses his new financial influence in a world where, as several characters observe, "you can buy anything" to execute a complex scheme to first win back Dominique, and then destroy her life by faking his own death after which she is imprisoned for his 'murder'. The final image of the film shows Karol staring at Dominique through the window of her prison cell, while crying.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111507/

Three Colors: Blue (1993)

AKA Trois couleurs: Bleu

Directed by
Krzysztof Kieslowski

Written by
Krzysztof Kieslowski (scenario)
Krzysztof Piesiewicz (scenario)
Agnieszka Holland (scenario collaborator)
Edward Zebrowski (scenario collaborator)
Slawomir Idziak (scenario collaborator)

Julie (Juliette Binoche), wife of the famous composer Patrice de Courcy, must cope with the death of her husband and daughter in an automobile accident she herself survives. While recovering in the hospital, Julie attempts suicide by overdose, but cannot swallow the pills. After being released from the hospital, Julie closes up the house she lived in with her family and takes an apartment in Paris without telling anyone. She leaves behind all her clothes and possessions, taking only a chandelier of blue beads that presumably belonged to her daughter.

For the remainder of the film, Julie disassociates herself from all past memories and distances herself from former friendships, as can be derived from a conversation she has with her mother who suffers from Alzheimer's disease and believes Julie is her own sister Marie-France. She also destroys the score for her late husband's last commissioned, though unfinished, work—a piece celebrating European unity, following the end of the Cold War. It is strongly suggested that she wrote, or at least co-wrote, her husband's last work. Snatches of the music haunt her throughout the film.

She reluctantly befriends an exotic dancer who is having an affair with one of the neighbours and helps her when she needs moral support. Despite her desire to live anonymously and alone, life in Paris forces Julie to confront elements of her past that she would rather not face, including Olivier (Benoît Régent), a friend of the couple. Olivier is also a composer and former assistant of Patrice's at the conservatory. He is in love with Julie, and suspects that she is in fact the true author of her late husband's music. Olivier appears in a TV interview announcing that he shall try to complete Patrice's commission. Julie also discovers that her late husband was having an affair.

While both trying to stop Olivier from completing the score, and finding out who her husband's mistress was, she becomes more engaged in her former life. She tracks down Sandrine (Florence Pernel), Patrice's mistress, and finds out that she is carrying his child; Julie arranges for her to have her husband's house and recognition of his paternity for the child. This provokes her to begin a relationship with Olivier, and to resurrect her late husband's last composition, which has been changing according to her notes on Olivier's work. Olivier decides not to incorporate the changes suggested by Julie, stating that this piece is now his music and has ceased to be Patrice's. He says that she must either accept his composition with all its roughness or she must allow people to know the truth about her composition. She agrees on the grounds that the truth about her husband's music would not be revealed as her own work.

In the final sequence, the Unity of Europe piece is played (which features chorus and a solo soprano singing Saint Paul's 1 Corinthians 13 epistole in Greek), and images are seen of all the people Julie has affected by her actions. The final image is of Julie, crying—the second time she does so in the film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108394/

In the Mood for Love (2000)

AKA 花樣年華; 花样年华; Huāyàng niánhuá; Fa yeung nin wa (Fā yeuhng nìhn wàh)

Directed by
Wong Kar-wai

Writing credits
Wong Kar-wai

The film takes place in Hong Kong, 1962. Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung), a journalist, rents a room in an apartment of a building on the same day as Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung), a secretary from a shipping company. They become next-door neighbors. Each has a spouse who works and often leaves them alone on overtime shifts. Despite the presence of a friendly Shanghainese landlady, Mrs. Suen, and bustling, mahjong-playing neighbors, Chow and Su often find themselves alone in their rooms. Their lives continue to intersect in everyday situations: a recurring motif in this film is the loneliness of eating alone, and the film documents the leads' chance encounters, each making their individual trek to the street noodle stall.

Chow and Su each nurse suspicions about their own spouse's fidelity; each comes to the conclusion that their spouses have been seeing each other. Su wonders aloud how their spouse's affair might have began, and together, Su and Chow re-enact what they imagine might have happened.

Chow soon invites Su to help him write a martial arts serial for the papers. As their relationship develops, their neighbors begin to take notice. In the context of a socially conservative 1960s' Hong Kong, friendships between men and women bear scrutiny. Chow rents a hotel room away from the apartment where he and Su can work together without attracting attention. The relationship between Chow and Su is platonic, and defiantly so, as there is the suggestion that they would be degraded if they stooped to the level of their spouses. As time passes, however, they acknowledge that they have developed feelings for each other. Chow leaves Hong Kong for a job in Singapore. He asks Su to go with him; Chow waits for her at the hotel room for a time, and then leaves. She can be seen rushing down the stairs of her apartment, only to arrive at the empty hotel room, too late to join Chow.

The next year, Su goes to Singapore and visits Chow's apartment where she calls Chow, who is working for a Singaporean newspaper, but she remains silent on the phone when Chow picks up. Later, Chow realizes she has visited his apartment after seeing a lipstick-stained cigarette butt in his ashtray. While dining with a friend, Chow relays a story about how in older times, when a person had a secret that could not be shared, he would instead go atop a mountain, make a hollow in a tree, whisper the secret into that hollow and cover it with mud.

Three years later, Su visits with her former landlady, Mrs. Suen. Mrs. Suen is about to emigrate to the United States, and Su inquires about whether the apartment is available for rent. Some time later, Chow returns to visit his landlords, the Koos. He finds they have emigrated to the Philippines. He asks about the Suen family next door, and the new owner tells him a woman and her son are now living next door. He leaves without realizing Su is the lady living next door.

The film ends at Siem Reap, Cambodia, where Chow is seen visiting the Angkor Wat. At the site of a ruined monastery, he whispers for some time into a hollow in a ruined wall, before plugging the hollow with mud.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118694/

An Autumn Afternoon (1962)

AKA Sanma no aji

Director:
Yasujirô Ozu

Writers:
Kôgo Noda
Yasujirô Ozu

 

Shuhei Hirayama (Chishu Ryu) is an aging widower with a married eldest son, Koichi (Keiji Sada), and two unmarried children – a 24-year-old daughter Michiko (Shima Iwashita) and a younger son Kazuo (Shinichirô Mikami). Since marriage Koichi has shifted out with his wife, leaving Kazuo and Hirayama in Michiko's care.

Hirayama and his fellow classmates Kawai (Nobuo Nakamura) and Horie (Ryuji Kita) go to a class reunion where one of their teachers, Sakuma (Eijiro Tono), nicknamed the "Gourd", is in attendance. The friends tease Horie who has married a much younger wife. They reminisce about the past and Sakuma has too much to drink, and Kawai and Hirayama have to bring him home. They meet his spinster daughter Tomoko (Haruko Sugimura), who has missed the chance to marry when young, and is now too old to marry.

Koichi borrows 50,000 yen from his father to buy a refrigerator, but plans to use the excess money to buy second-hand golf clubs. His wife Akiko (Mariko Okada) is in disagreement, but finally relents. However, she decides ill-temperedly to use some of this extra money to buy for herself a white leather purse as well.

Sakuma tells his former pupils that it is owing to his own selfishness that his daughter is now an old spinster. Troubled by Sakuma's daughter's example, Hirayama decides on an arranged marriage for Michiko. He asks Koichi if Koichi's colleague Miura (Teruo Yoshida), whom Michiko is fond of, is interested in Michiko. Unfortunately, Miura is already engaged. Koichi and Hirayama break the news to a visibly upset Michiko, and later ask her if she is willing to go for a matchmaking session with a candidate Kawai has selected. Michiko agrees.

In one of the ellipses Ozu is famous for, the film forwards to Michiko's wedding day. (Michiko clearly has agreed to marry, though her bridegroom is never shown.) Michiko prepares to wed in a traditional wedding kimono. (The actual ceremony is never shown.) Hirayama goes to a bar to celebrate her wedding afterwards and ends up drunk. When he returns, Koichi and his wife go off, leaving behind Kazuo who duly goes to bed, and a melancholic Hirayama sitting in the middle of the night.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056444/