Isabelle Weingarten Movies

With this 410-minute epic, Prolific Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira adapts the 7-hour stage play of Catholic playwright Paul Claudel. Two people -- Dona Prouheze (Anne Consigny) and Don Rodigue (Luis Miguel Cintra) have fallen in love but are honor-bound to renounce their passion for a greater love of God. Dona Prouheze is particularly devout and has offered her satin slipper to the Virgin Mary in exchange for the Virgin's protection against sin. She dies as virginal as when she was born, while Don Rodrigue conquers Asian lands for king and country. As his life progresses, he becomes more and more devoted to painting religious subjects on his ship, rebuffing the royal attempts to get him back into active duty. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

"Little Joseph" is only seven years old and not sophisticated enough to adjust to the fact that his family seems incapable of relating to him in human terms. His grandparents are militant leftists dedicated to their profession of teaching because they value education at the cost of most other pursuits and are oblivious to the human wasteland that characterizes their own family. Joseph's father is a rigid demagogue who negates his wife's lighter hand, and since they are in the process of separating anyway, Joseph is destined to be a child of custody battles and single-parent households -- an unrecognized casualty in a world of egocentric adults. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Nicola (Lou Castel) bears the psychological scars of unbearable guilt. As a boy, he was given the job of looking after his mentally unstable mother and protecting her from herself. One day, he and his sister went instead into a large closet and enacted a childishly intensive "I dare you" bonding ritual, marking one another with the blade of their father's sword cane. While he was occupied in this manner, the boy's mother hung herself and died. Now an adult, he still has an unhealthily strong fixation on his sister. This is so obvious that a girlfriend of his sister's, with whom he has an affair, breaks it off, complaining that she is not interested in being a stand-in for the sister. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Four Nights of a Dreamer is a loose adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novella White Nights, with the action transposed from 19th century Russia to modern-day France. One night, Jacques (Guillaume Des Forets), a young man with artistic aspirations, sees a girl (Isabelle Weingarten) trying to commit suicide by jumping from a bridge. When he prevents her from jumping, Marthe tells him that she has become desperate waiting for her lover, who left her almost a year ago but promised to return. Jacques asks Marthe to meet him by the bridge the next night and the girl agrees. They spend the following three nights wandering through Paris, and Jacques tries in vain to cure Marthe of the memories of her elusive lover. The same story was previously filmed by Luchino Visconti as Le Notti Bianche. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide