Laurent Uhler

In 19th century, a disillusioned priest helps a young boy drifter who's a chess wunderkind to move on up in life and social structures using his talent. Years later, he's a success, but game of life and love has higher stakes than chess.

Julie is a young woman from Rose Hill who arrives in rural Switzerland to marry her older pen-friend Marcel. She feels unhappy until she meets Jean, a younger man. However, his father disagrees.

The efforts of an aspiring filmmaker to include an unwilling female in his production.

The film relates the painful ending of a love story binding an over-30-year-old woman and a North African, and the beginning and end of a relationship she also has with an “established” journalist. The stories illustrate the absolute claim of a woman who can understand love only in terms of life and death, an attitude that generally makes love appear dramatic, but at least burning and flickering, like the flame that glows in her heart.

Madeleine, who runs a disco on the French-Swiss border, dreams of going to Paris to pursue a singing career. Her lover, Paul, who makes his living smuggling money, gold and goods across the border, plans to emigrate to Canada. Mali, a pretty young Algerian woman who lives in France and works in Switzerland, would like to be anywhere except where she is. Louis, born on a Swiss farm and trained as a clockmaker, would give anything to leave his mistress, Lucie, and move in with Mali.

화물선의 선원인 폴은 리스본의 항구에 홀로 내려 아무것도 하지 않는 시간을 보낸다. 그는 우연히 발견한 호텔에 묵으면서 8mm 카메라로 주위의 풍경과 자신의 모습을 기록해 아내에게 영상 편지를 보낸다. 실제로 화물선에서 일한 경험이 있는 감독이 담아낸 리스본의 아름다우면서 건조한 풍광이 인상적인 작품.

Two young women from very different backgrounds journey into the countryside seeking respite from unsatisfactory lives and relationships, but ultimately find that there is no way back to the world they once knew.