Yves Dangerfield

Late 17th Century: Anne de Grandcamp and Lucie de Fontenelle, two little girls from Normandy, arrive at the Saint-Cyr school founded by Madame de Maintenon for educating the daughters of impoverished nobles ruined in wars and making them into free women. Madame de Maintenon is the secret wife of Louis XIV, and empowered by his support, she offers "her" two hundred fifty girls a playful and avant-garde education. Anne and Lucie, two inseparable friends, allow themselves to be carried away by the promise of a bright future. But Maintenon has arrived at the pinnacle of power through scheming and debasing herself and she now fears the fires of hell. She is counting on her model school to atone for her past sins.

After a confinement in a harem, an illiterate Algerian takes her revenge by reinventing herself as a writer. Under the name of Elissa Rhaïs, she becomes the darling of the literary Paris of the inter-war period, in search of oriental fantasies.

Simon lives in an affluent intellectual environment, headed by his mother Alice. Raphael, his cousin, belongs to the poor branch of the family, but Simon adores him. So he decides to help him become a writer.

On 9 January 1836, Pierre Lacenaire goes to the guillotine, a murderer and a thief. He gives Allard, a police inspector, his life story, written while awaiting execution. He also asks Allard to care for Hermine, a lass to whom he has been guardian for more than ten years. In flashbacks, from the prison as Lacenaire writes, from Allard's study as he and Hermine read, and from other readers' memory after the book is published, we see Lacenaire's childhood as he stands up to bullies, including priests, his youthful thieving, his first murder, his brief army career, his seduction of a princess, and his affair with Avril, a young man who dies beside him.

선교사의 사명을 가지고 탄광촌에 정착했던 빈센트 반 고호(Vincent Van Gogh: 팀 로스 분)가 본격적인 전업화가의 길을 들어서려 하는 데에서 이야기는 시작된다. 이에 파리의 큰 화랑에서 미술품 중개상으로 취직해 일하고 있던 그의 동생 테오(Theodore Van Gogh: 폴 라이스 분)는 형의 천재적인 예술 세계를 가장 잘 이해하고 있으면서도, 바로 그 이유 때문에 형의 전업 선언을 반대한다. 벌써 오래 전부터 아버지의 이름으로 형에게 많은 액수의 생활비를 보내주고 있지만, 이제부터는 자기가 형의 그 괴상하고 인기없는 그림들을 팔아주어야 한다는 부담이 생겼기 때문이다. 한편 빈센트는 창녀 지앙(Sien Hoornik: 집 위가든 분)과 그녀의 딸을 사랑하여 서로 부담없는 동거 생활에 들어가고, 이 일 때문에 스승 모브에게 버림을 받기도 한다. 스승은 아카데믹한 제자가 되어 주길 원한 빈센트가 창녀와 놀아나는 것을 참을 수 없었던 것. 그러나 빈센트는 스승 모브 역시 자기 아내가 아닌 모델과 지내는 것을 참을 수 없다며 반발을 하고 둘은 쌈으로 관계를 끝맺는다. 상업적 화랑에서 일하는 테오는 능력을 인정받고 승진을 보장받는다.

25 year-old Hippo doesn't have a job, doesn't study either but lives from the money his younger brother earns with dealing and from occasional Poker winnings.

This drama attempts to be a film within a film. In the outer story, Andre Dussolier stars as a film director working with drama students at the Paris Conservatory, making a film (the inner story) about a woman's obsession with a foreign desert. Wallowing in maudlin sentimentality, this feature fails to live up to the promise of its probable inspiration, Fame (1980), and was not well-received at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. However, as a medium for instructing director Francis Girod's actual students at the Paris Conservatory about the art and perils of filmmaking, it was undoubtedly a good deal more successful.