The Girls in Their Summer Dresses and Other Stories (1981)
Genre : Drama
Runtime : 1H 30M
Director : John Glenmeister, Nick Havinga
Synopsis
Three Irwin Shaw short stories are dramatized. In "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses" a young married couple stop for a drink on a Sunday morning in Manhattan, and the conversation turns to the husband's fidelity. "The Monument" centers on the conflict between a popular bartender with a following in an upscale Irish bar in 1938 Manhattan and its owner, who is determined to introduce a more economical whiskey in the establishment over the barkeep's objections. In "The Man Who Married a French Wife" the influential American husband of a French woman is asked by her former lover, a former resistance fighter, to help him escape the country.
In Hong Kong of 1962, Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow, a journalist, move into neighbouring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their respective spouses creates an intimate bond between them.
Parisian everyman Antoine Doinel has married his sweetheart Christine Darbon, and the newlyweds have set up a cozy domestic life of selling flowers and giving violin lessons while Antoine fitfully works on his long-gestating novel. As Christine becomes pregnant with the couple's first child, Antoine finds himself enraptured with a young Japanese beauty. The complications change the course of their relationship forever.
A coming of age dramedy where infidelity, real estate, and Lyme disease have two families falling apart on Long Island in the early eighties. Scott, 15, is at the point in his life when he finds out that the most important people around him, his father, his mother, and his brother, are not exactly who he thought they were. They are flawed and they are human.
Longtime friends Ronny and Nick are partners in an auto-design firm. They are hard at work on a presentation for a dream project that would really launch their company. Then Ronny spots Nick's wife out with another man, and in the process of investigating the possible affair, he learns that Nick has a few secrets of his own. As the presentation nears, Ronny agonizes over what might happen if the truth gets out.
Middle-aged suburban husband Richard abruptly tells his wife, Maria, that he wants a divorce. As Richard takes up with a younger woman, Maria enjoys a night on the town with her friends and meets a younger man. As the couple and those around them confront a seemingly futile search for what they've lost -- love, excitement, passion -- this classic American independent film explores themes of aging and alienation.
Photographer Robert Kincaid wanders into the life of housewife Francesca Johnson for four days in the 1960s.
After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims who use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.
After five (or six) years of vanilla-wedded bliss, ordinary suburbanites John and Jane Smith are stuck in a huge rut. Unbeknownst to each other, they are both coolly lethal, highly-paid assassins working for rival organisations. When they discover they're each other's next target, their secret lives collide in a spicy, explosive mix of wicked comedy, pent-up passion, nonstop action and high-tech weaponry.
In New York, a struggling actress and a successful writer sing about their failed marriage from two perspectives.
To the amusement of their adult children and friends, long divorced couple Don and Ellie Griffin are once again forced to play the happy couple for the sake of their adopted son's wedding after his ultra conservative biological mother unexpectedly decides to fly halfway across the world to attend. With all of the wedding guests looking on, the Griffins are hilariously forced to confront their past, present and future - and hopefully avoid killing each other in the process.
Ted Kramer is a career man for whom his work comes before his family. His wife Joanna cannot take this anymore, so she decides to leave him. Ted is now faced with the tasks of housekeeping and taking care of himself and their young son Billy.
A young couple living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s struggle to come to terms with their personal problems while trying to raise their two children. Based on a novel by Richard Yates.
Manhattan explores how the life of a middle-aged television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.
As young French couple Gilles and Marion officially separate, we see, in reverse order, the milestone moments in their relationship: Gilles revealing his unfaithfulness at a tense dinner party; Marion giving birth to their premature son while Gilles is elsewhere; Gilles and Marion's joyous wedding; and, finally, the fateful moment when they meet as acquaintances at an Italian beach resort, and their love affair begins.
Soon-to-be-wed graduate student Finn Dodd develops cold feet when she suspects her fiancé is cheating on her. In order to clear her head, Finn visits her grandmother, Hy, and great aunt, Glady Joe Cleary, in Grasse, Calif. There, Finn learns that Hy and Glady Joe are members of a group of passionate quilters, and over the course of her visit she is regaled with tales of love and life by women who have collected rich experiences and much wisdom.
A meditation on love and its various incarnations, set within a community of friends in Oregon. It is described as an exploration of the magical, mysterious and sometimes painful incarnations of love.
An endearing light comedy about a woman who spontaneously becomes a resident of Venice after her family left her begin. While enjoying the wonderful people she meets she achieves a new life and the first time independent of her family.
After losing the woman of his dreams, Anderson is convinced he'll never fall in love again. But at the urging of his best friend, he spontaneously proposes to a dissatisfied waitress named Katie and an innocent dare evolves into the kind of love that both have been looking for all along.
Four couples, all friends, descend on a tropical island resort. Though one husband and wife are there to work on their marriage, the others just want to enjoy some fun in the sun. They soon find, however, that paradise comes at a price: Participation in couples therapy sessions is mandatory. What started out as a cut-rate vacation turns into an examination of the common problems many face.
When affluent executive Wayne Hayes is kidnapped by a disgruntled employee and held for ransom in a forest, Wayne’s wife is forced to reckon with the FBI agents as they negotiate with the kidnapper.
