Writer
The comfortable daily routines of aging Parisian actor Gilbert Valence, 76, are suddenly shaken when he learns that his wife, daughter, and son-in-law have been killed in a car crash. Having to take care of his now-orphaned grandson, he struggles to go on with his lifelong acting career like he's used to. But the roles he is offered -- a flashy TV show and a hectic last-minute replacement in an English-language film of Joyce's Ulysses -- finally convince him that it's time to retire.
Writer
La señorita De Chartres ha sufrido su primer desengaño amoroso. Una noche, una amiga de su madre le presenta a un médico de gran reputación, Jacques de Clèves. Este se enamora de ella, y ambos se casan, a pesar de que ella no le corresponde en su amor. En cambio, un cantante de moda sí hace nacer en ella este sentimiento. La lucha entre su matrimonio y sus sentimientos desembocarán en un callejón sin salida para la nueva señora de Clèves.
Writer
Manoel is an aging film director who travels with the film crew through Portugal in search of the origins of Afonso, a famous French actor whose father emigrated from Portugal to France and in process remembers his own youth.
Writer
This French language drama from Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira takes an ironic look at the pretentiousness of international jet-setters while simultaneously examining an obsessive romantic relationship between an aging Lothario and a beautiful married woman. The tale begins at a garden party in a lovely villa in the Azores held by Rogerio and Leonor for handsome, middle-aged Michel and his mistress Irene, a noted Greek movie star. The guests aren't there long before an obvious attraction between Leonor and Michel prompts them to head for a private beach (their tryst, if there was one, occurs off-camera). Five years later, the foursome again meet for a garden party and once again they pair off after spending much time discussing gender differences, emotion, social insight and exchanging witty bon mots.
Writer
Manoel de Oliveira plays his film in three stages: the first part - a play, the second can be roughly defined as a silent film (with the behind the scenes read excerpts from Beckett works), but in the end the director brilliantly performs the same material of the avant-garde exercise. Surprisingly, a joke, repeated three times, each time everything sounds fresh and develops into an almost verbatim adaptation of the biblical "Book of Job" - a spectacular point in a parable about how hard to empathize with other people's misery, when you have your own.
