Bearing traces of the old Anton Chekhov play The Wedding, The Contract is set during an "arranged" ceremony. The bride and groom barely know each other, but this matters not at all to their tradition-bound families. At the last minute, the bride balks. Only slightly nonplused, the groom's father, a status-seeking doctor, decides to go ahead with the expensive reception anyway. Polish director Krzysz Zanussi uses this scenario to stick it to capitalist corruption, and to society's destruction of the individual spirit. Leslie Caron, the one recognizable member of the cast, is outstanding as a wealthy, over-the-hill ballerina who happens to be a kleptomaniac.
Camille, a young, provincial, proletarian man works for Hélène Courtray, who is still beautiful and seductive. She's a sophisticated, cultivated and well-to-do woman who has engaged him to care for her reclusive son who has spent the past few years voluntarily locked up in his room. An encounter between two persons and two worlds where the relationship of the young man to this closed, strange and unknown universe rapidly turns tragedy.
По пьесе Фридриха Дюрренматта "Визит старой дамы". Эксцентричная миллионерша спустя много лет возвращается в родные места, чтобы взыскать с земляков старый должок. Она приняла решение пожертвовать городку, пришедшему в упадок, огромную сумму. Но при одном условии: мужчина, который когда-то соблазнил и бросил ее, должен умереть...
