Film Festivals Featured Lists

Director James Ivory brings his subdued, "Masterpiece Theater" style to a forbidden subject -- homosexual love. Maurice is based on E.M. Forster's suppressed 1914 novel that was held back from publication until after his death. The film takes place at Cambridge, before World War I, when homosexuality was outlawed in Great Britain. Clive (Hugh Grant), an aristocratic Englishman with a life of privilege, suddenly shocks his close friend Maurice (James Wilby) by declaring his love for him. Maurice is initially stunned by the pronouncement, but in the end finds himself giving Clive a passionate kiss and telling him that he loves him as well. Clive, in the stiff-upper-lip British manner, considers their love to be more of an intellectual concept, but Maurice becomes passionate about the affair. Clive, afraid of being exposed as a homosexual, backs off and breaks up with Maurice for marriage, family, and politics. Maurice is crestfallen, but then he has a passionate affair with Clive's gamekeeper, Scudder (Rupert Graves), and Maurice and Scudder decide to risk their reputations by openly living together as lovers. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

This comedy follows a determined female election official (Nassim Abdi) and the grumpy soldier (Cyrus Abidi) assigned to escort her as she tries to collect votes on a remote Iranian island. The soldier, one of two assigned to stand guard on the island, is aghast at the thought of a woman giving him orders, and complains constantly. She is just as stubborn in her determination to wring every vote out of an island inhabited almost entirely by illiterate shepherds and smugglers who would rather that the government not even know that they exist at all. Director Babak Payami's film is an extended battle of the sexes that takes a few digs at the Iranian political process along the way. ~ Tom Vick, Rovi

Giuseppe Piccioni follows up on his 1999 opus Not of this World with this understated drama about fantasy and reality. The film centers on Antonio (Luigi Lo Cascio), a youngish chauffeur who is a model of professional promptness and courtesy. He also possesses a vivid inner world dominated by images of other worlds and other planets. A chance near-accident introduces him to Maria (Sandra Ceccarelli), a struggling single mother trying desperately to keep her frozen foods store afloat and to keep her daughter from being taken away from her by the child's grasping grandparents. Even though Maria is extremely suspicious of Antonio's intentions, the two form a slow tentative relationship. When he learns Maria's dire circumstances, he selflessly tries to intercede at the expense of his own career. Antonio makes quiet deals with the sleazy gangster (Silvio Orlando) to whom Maria owes money, drives the crime boss around on his various errands, and eventually participates in some of his shady dealings. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto and Venice Film Festivals. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi