Georg Tryphon Movies

A hectic young father's family life takes a turn for the worse in Swiss director Dani Levy's 2002 comedy/drama I'm the Father. Architect Marco Krieger (Sebastian Blomberg) has been working hard on a new project that will be the crowning achievement to his short career and will also make his name in the industry -- but his relationships with his son Benny (Ezra Valentin Lenz) and wife Melanie (Maria Schrader) have suffered greatly as a result. Marco has failed to notice how dire the situation is, however, until Melanie leaves with Benny and promptly files for divorce with severe custody limitations. Shattered and distraught, Marco must reevaluate his desires for success in the business world against his desires to be a father and husband, ultimately choosing the latter. The problem now is convincing Melanie to let him back into their lives, which may require extraordinary action on his part. I'm the Father was screened as part of the 2002 Montreal World Film Festival. ~ Ryan Shriver, Rovi

Danny Huston's Becoming Colette purports to be an account of the early formative years of French author Gabrielle Colette (Mathilda May) and her evolution from naive country bumpkin to a Parisian socialite in a George Sand suit. The film turns up the heat with Colette as a teen with a crush on her father. This desire is then transferred to the suave and cosmopolitan Villars (Klaus Maria Brandauer) -- a fatherly twenty-five years her senior. The two start their hanky-panky on her father's country estate, resulting in a whirlwind courtship and marriage. Their honeymoon night is a succession of passionate unbuttonings. Colette writes in detail about it the next day in her diary. Villars then takes Colette to the Moulin Rouge to meet his mistress, the bisexual Polaire (Virginia Madsen). Polaire and Colette hit it off and soon are taking it off in a lesbian embrace. Meanwhile, Villars has taken to publishing Colette's diaries and is making money hand over fist. But finally Colette catches on after realizing that while she is toiling away at home cranking out Claudine books, Villars is busy taking her earnings and spending the cash on a succession of frilly mistresses. Making her stand in pants, she decides to abandon Villars and go out on her own. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Forbidden represented not only the TV-movie bow of Jacqueline Bisset, but also the American debut of German film favorite Jurgen Prochnow. Filmed in Berlin by a British production crew, this fact-based story concerns German countess Nina von Halder (Bissett). Despite the anti-Semitic edicts of the Hitler regime, Nina becomes romantically involved with Jewish Fritz Friedlander (Jurgen Prochnow). Complicating matters is the fact that Fritz is already married. The infidelity angle is put on hold as Nina hides her lover from the Nazis, all the while remaining active with the Resistance. Based on the Leonard Gross novel The Last Jews of Berlin, Forbidden originally aired March 24, 1985, over the HBO cable service. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Gudrun Landgrebe plays a housewife who abruptly leaves her husband for a life of prostitution. At first, she retains her staid, middle-class values, but before long she is one of the most sexually adventurous women walking the streets. Soon she has more business than she can manage, forcing her to learn highly advanced bookkeeping skills to keep her business in order. While Gundrun indulges customers with fetishist inclinations, her AC-DC business partner Mathieu Carriere services both male and female clients. Becoming romantically involved themselves, Gundrun and Mathieu find that they can't manage a private and professional life at the same time. As the title suggests, one of the partners takes very drastic measures to express her discomfort with the conditions that prevail. Woman in Flames was an enormous moneymaker in Germany, where it was released as Die Flambierte Frau (which translates to the curiously gastronomic title A Woman Flambee). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi