Ingrid Caven Movies

A made-on-HD video documentary about fascinating European filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, directed by the equally notable Rosa von Prauheim, this feature attempts to shed light on his rocky life in a tell-all fashion. The film interviews several artists who worked with Fassbinder, dating back to the mid-'60s, when the director was invited to participate in the experimental Action Theatre group, which he quickly seized control of. He was known to have uncontrollable mood swings that could alienate others without warning, to take out aggressions on his cast and crew, and to demand sexual favors and money whenever required. The movie also focuses on the women in his life, especially actress Hanna Schygulla, who made quite a career out of her work for the tumultuous director. Known widely as a gay man, Fassbinder still required the attention of females, whom he often proposed to and turned to for comfort. Among the figures that the documentary interviews are actress Jeanne Moreau, whom Fassbinder cast in his final film Querelle, famous cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, and producer Peter Berling, the latter of whom doesn't recount the happier times with the troubled but brilliant director, who he died of an overdose in 1982.
~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide

French critic and filmmaker André Téchiné directs the intense family drama Ma Saison Préférée (My Favorite Season), which he co-wrote with screenwriter Pascal Bonitzer. Family matriarch Berthe (Marthe Villalonga) is advancing in years and developing health problems, so she goes to live with her daughter Emilie (Catherine Deneuve). Emilie is a cold, fiftysomething professional who lives in a large upper-class home in Toulouse. She also lives with her husband Bruno (Jean-Pierre Bouvier), her daughter Anne (Deneuve's real-life daughter Chiara Mastroianni), and her adopted son Lucien (Anthony Prada). When Christmas arrives, Emilie's troubled brother Antoine (Daniel Auteuil) arrives at the house for a visit. He and Emilie have not spoken since their father's funeral three years ago. Despite his attempts to maintain control, Antoine quickly comes into conflict with Bruno. Painful emotional realities from the past return and cause violent conclusions. My Favorite Season was shown in competition at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

The formerly great Swiss hotel which Valentin's family owned when he was a boy has been emptied and is about to be torn down. He revisits the magical site's empty halls and ballrooms in order to relive his fond memories of the place. As he remembers, flashbacks reveal episodes in the lives of those who populated these lodgings. One of the boy's favorite experiences was hearing his grandmother tell how an anarchist assassinated an enemy at the hotel; another favorite story was about the time the famous French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt seduced the boy's grandfather. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Escher (Jurgen Prochnow) wanders through the South Sea islands after his partner Quinn (Tony Doyle) is murdered in this drama taken from a novel by Joseph Conrad. When he checks into the Grand Pacific Hotel, Escher encounters a variety of memorable guests. Included are the perverted Mr. Jones (Sam Waterston), the sinister innkeeper Schomberg (Mario Adorf), and Julie (Suzanna Hamilton), a saxophone player in an all-female band. Escher helps Julie escape from the lecherous intentions of the philandering Schomberg. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This strange film about lesbianism and murder may take itself too seriously, since the stilted lines would perhaps play better as a farce. The setting is the 1920s, and Marthe (Ingrid Caven) is the headmistress of an all-girls school and is distraught over her lover's emotional instability. It seems that the woman, Solange (Catherine Jourdan) by name, is being treated for drug addiction as well as undergoing therapy in a psychiatric hospital. In the meantime, one of the women at school has reappeared after an unexplained absence, and although she has brought along a policeman for personal protection, his presence does not prevent her murder. Who dunnit? Most likely another woman, in this setting. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this non-story of the mentally and emotionally impaired inhabitants of a clinic for the insane, the medical profession along with humanity is distorted into a long, filmic exhibition of sado-masochism, urination, and ample nudity for its own sake. Critics that support the avant-garde might feel that the lack of apparent purpose in each "idiot's" (the title is "Day of the Idiots') physical and emotional problems is a form of high art. The viewers will have to decide for themselves. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a young wife leaves her German home to discover the identity of her mysterious late mother who married a Jewish German during WW II. Her mother was French, and soon after she married her aristocratic husband, Hitler came to power, causing the couple to flee to Argentina. Later he abandons the woman. Much of the complex tale is told via flashback, and in learning about her mother's past, the daughter begins to experience an emerging sense of identity and the knowledge of what she must do to avoid the same mistakes her mother made. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Two bit players in the movies share a home together, spend their days getting as much work as they can, and keep scrapbooks of their minor triumphs - literally in the background of the cinematic world. Costumed in character as an executive, one of the players is riding the bus to work when a woman mistakes him for a studio head and before the ride is over, she has been easily convinced to be a bit player. She quits her job and does become a bit player, in fact, when one day her mother decides to make a surprise visit to the studio. By coincidence, the crew have rebelled against the head of the studio that day, and the crazy bit players put on a false show to fool her mother into thinking that her daughter is a lead actress - making in fact, a film within a film. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This Rainer Werner Fassbinder drama centers around the lonely quest for love of Elvira Weishaupt, a man who became a woman to please his/her man. Just prior to that, Elivira had been jilted by her previous live-in partner, a man. She does the operation to win the heart of another, Anton. Unfortunately, the sex-change operation does not change the intended's mind; Anton is simply not interested. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A housewife's slow descent into suicidal depression is chronicled in great detail in this movie by experimental film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The anguish and suffering of a trio of outcasts is shown in this movie, based on Schatten der Engel Rainer Werner Fassbinder's controversial and possibly anti-Semitic stage play. A prostitute (Ingrid Craven) with a gift for eliciting confidences from her clients, her pimp (Fassbinder), and one of those clients, a Jewish real-estate speculator (Klaus Lowitsch), are caught up in an emotional hurricane which results in the deaths of the prostitute and her pimp. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Mother Kusters (Brigette Kira) is the wife of a factory worker who goes beserk one day, killing himself and the boss' son. Mother finds herself a media celebrity, which only serves to make herself and her late husband look like idiots. Later, Mother is "adopted" by a Communist couple who wish to exploit her husband's "act of defiance" for their own purposes. Finally left alone, Mother Kusters decides to stop living off her husband's notoriety and turn into a human being again. Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder used the 1929 film Mother Krausen's Journey to Happiness as a springboard for his own mysoginistic slant on opportunism. The film hit a bit too close to home in his own country, where it was banned from entering the Berlin Film Festival. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide