Romy Haag Movies

Otto Sander plays a German film director who shows his films to a skeptical panel of censors in this satire. He unspools the reels of his work in front of officials and religious leaders who make up the censorship board. Many filmmakers' and celebrities' faces familiar to German audiences appear in the film. One of the most memorable scenes involves a line-up of well-known directors awaiting their own appearance before the unforgiving board. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

A police officer investigating the death of a transvestite masks feelings of love for his widowed sister (Charlotte Rampling) while raging against her lover (Derek DeLint) in this Belgian film directed by Patrick Conrad. ~ John Bush, Rovi

Based on a novel by the exiled German writer Heinrich Mann, Belcanto forsakes the normal conception of a plot and unfolds instead as a series of three separate expressions of the beginning, middle, and end of an elaborate and elegant party. In the first segment, the idea of an opera is suggested when businessmen and artists are brought together by the manager of an opera house for an evening's festivities. What could more logically follow then, than a full-fledged opera (arranged by Wolfgang Woelfer) as the second part of the film. The opera itself is sung by the people at the manager's party. In the last segment, the party has come to an end and the guests all leave. Throughout the many scenes of the festivities, the actors pose against various backdrops and basically mime the meaning of what is being said or sung. Unlike the movie, the book has a plot that may help to explain all this to the unwashed. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi