The inner courtyard of a building in Belleville. Workshops and apartments where a painter, a saxophonist, a dancer from Cameroon and an actress live. A strange love affair is going to take place between these four characters.
L'aspirant Denis
Max, who dreams of adventures, abandons his studies at 18 to become involved in the navy. He becomes the sailor 512.
Following over two dozen different people in the almost wordless atmosphere of a dark night in a Brussels town, Akerman examines acceptance and rejection in the realm of romance.
Himself
In the streets of Marseille, René Allio encounters, once again, the spaces of his childhood, and remembers his family history.
Le mino - le neveu de Michel
Michel left Marseilles to Italy when he was twenty years old. Courageous and active, he has succeeded in the construction industry. Thirty years later, his return to Marseilles, for his aunt's burial will abruptly change the life of all of his family, who was first fascinated by his social success. He is regarded as the son who made it like wonder. Michel is the only one who has emigrated. They have all remained in the home country ("le pays") and their social status has hardly changed: workmen, small employees, craftsmen, all living in a modest framework.
Props
Based on documents compiled by leading French philosopher Michel Foucault, this unique and original film charts the gruesome events which took place in a Normandy village in 1835, when a young man, Pierre Rivière, murdered his mother, sister and brother before fleeing to the countryside. With a cast made up of real-life villagers from the area where the events took place, the detailed re-enactments and careful attention to the gestures of their ancestors serve to create an intense and sometimes disturbing atmosphere of hyper-realism. Details of the crime and of the trial that followed are told from varied perspectives, including the written confession of Pierre himself, and form a rich and complex narrative that interrogates the concepts of “truth” and “history”.
Paul
A young man is checked into a mental hospital for unexplained reasons.
