Isabelle Pasco Movies

Several star-crossed couples experience both the thrills and the disappointment of romance over the course of one evening in this romantic comedy. Reporter Marcello (Giancarlo Giannini) has a brief encounter with Irene (Marie Trintignant) while waiting for a train. A young woman who has lost her sight (Silvia De Santis) finds herself falling for the voice of a ship's captain (Yari Gugilucci) she hears over a radio broadcast. Egle (Ornella Muti), a massage therapist who is soon to be married, finds herself pursuing one last fling with Gabriele (James Thierree) -- though the odds are not in her favor, since he happens to be gay. Elena (Isabelle Pasco) is a young woman with a child who wants to abandon her husband. And Carla (Marina Confalone) wonders if she has any future at all with her lover -- who is married to someone else. Una Lunga Lunga Lunga Notte D'Amore was directed by veteran filmmaker Luciano Emmer, who was 83 when the film opened in Europe in the spring of 2001. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The personal lives of five exotic dancers go under the microscope in this drama, the first American feature from director Michael Radford. Eddie (Robert Wisdom) is the manager of a strip club in suburban California known as the Blue Iguana, where he keeps an eye on the women who make their living dancing for his customers. Stormy (Sheila Kelley) is an attractive, thick-skinned woman who is getting old enough to realize her days as a dancer may be numbered. Jo (Jennifer Tilly) likes to think of herself as the Blue Iguana's star attraction, though her career may hit a detour now that she's learned she's pregnant. Angel (Daryl Hannah) is a sweet, but immature woman, who tries to deal with her fear of being unloved by adopting a child. Jasmine (Sandra Oh), an aspiring poet, tries not to get settled into a career as a stripper, while being encouraged in her writing by coffeehouse owner Dennis (Chris Hogan), who features spoken word performers. And Jesse (Charlotte Ayanna), the youngest of the performers, expresses her desperate need for approval in her desire to please the customers. Dancing at the Blue Iguana received its world premiere at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Franco Melis is utterly humiliated at being reduced to performing stand-up comedy before young unappreciative audiences who do not realize that he was once a great and highly respected star, and, desperate for a chance to reclaim his lost fame, he jumps at the opportunity to appear in a low-budget independent art film. It is being specially made for exhibition at the Venice Film festival. This Italian comedy chronicles the struggle of Melis, one that grows even more difficult in the face of a press that is more interested in the juicy details of his personal life than in his new movie. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this Italian drama an astrophysicist returns to his birthplace and re-discovers his humanity. Lorenzo needs money. He stops his research in Milan and goes to his former childhood villa in Sicily to sell it. Because workers are renovating it, he must linger longer than he wanted. He begins to remember the slower pace of Sicilians as compared to the hustle of mainland urban Italy. He slowly becomes friends with Salvatore, the head repairman. He lives in an alternative-therapy community for mental patients. His son Agostino is a patient there. Salvatore's simple philosophies have a cathartic effect upon Lorenzo who begins to view the handyman as a father figure. When Lorenzo was younger his own father died. As a result, Lorenzo left Sicily. The research also finds healing in his relationship to Luisa, another patient to whom is drawn. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Several different stories are brought together by the end of this film, which chronicles how a number of Italians spend, or mis-spend their Saturday evenings prior to becoming acquainted during an auto collision. In one appealing story, a stripper agrees to do her act for a group of well-heeled teenagers while their parents are away. When the mother of one of them returns and calls the cops on her, the boys who arranged her performance run away with her, and she and the lads become friendly. In another story, two adrenaline-addicted, druggy girls allow themselves to be picked up by a pair of novice womanizers. In another story, the stakes in a poker game grow uncomfortably high and involve bets which have nothing to do with money. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Puzzle-master Peter Greenaway exposes another aspect of his peculiar obsessions to the filmgoing public. Prospero's Books uses Shakespeare as a foundation and then skips along to define its own lush territory. The books of the title are briefly referenced in The Tempest -- Prospero is a magician who gets to keep only a small fragment of his enormous library when he is exiled with his daughter to an enchanted island. In the film, Prospero is played by Sir John Gielgud. Indeed, everybody is voiced by Gielgud as he describes the events that unfold. But mostly, he describes the books, and as he does, the screen fills with florid calligraphies, astonishing diagrams, extravagant paintings, and lots and lots of naked people. ~ John Voorhees, Rovi

Isabelle Pasco and Gerard Sandoz play an impressionable young couple living in Marseilles. Both husband and wife are mesmerized by the lions in the city zoo, the wife in particular. The husband goes so far as to take a job at the zoo so as to be nearer the animals. Fired from his position, the husband takes the wife to another town, where they continue their vicarious love affair with lions in a circus. Roselyne et Les Lions is a typically out-of-mainstream effort by Jean-Jacques Beineix, the auteur of Diva and Betty Blue. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Physician Robert Briand (Robin Renucci) runs a leper colony in the 15th century that takes in new residents who suffer from the ravages of syphilis. When the beautiful Marie-Blanche (Isabelle Pasco) is brought to the grim, prison-like facility, Robert finds she displays no apparent signs of disease. He risks everything when he falls in love with the woman and makes plans to run away with her. Erland Josephson plays Robert's father, with Piera Degli Esposti as Robert's faithful assistant Terese. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi