Paulo Branco Movies

A teenager forced into a new life finds it takes some unexpected turns in this offbeat coming of age drama from France. Life is not been good for sixteen year old Martial (Francois Civil) since his free-spirited mother (Florence Thomassin) broke up with his self-centered dad (Thomas Cerisola). Martial and his mother have moved into a small and shabby apartment in a different town, and his new schoolmates immediately show an open and violent hostility towards him. But Martial does make two new friends: Colette (Marine Barbosa) and Ernestine (Karine Barbosa), a pair of mysterious but beautiful twin sisters who have a strong reckless streak. Martial and the twins begin skipping school and passing their time by sneaking into people's homes, swiping booze and smoking marijuana when they can get it. It doesn't take long before they graduate from petty crime into more serious stuff, and Martial's occasional make-out sessions with Colette and Ernestine make way for a precocious three-way sexual relationship. As the police become aware of the delinquent threesome, the twins run away from home and hide out with Martial at his place, where his lackadaisical mother barely notices anything unusual is happening. Soit je meurs, soit je vais mieux (aka Dying Or Feeling Better) also stars Valerie Lang and Emile Berling. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Though Love Songs (aka Les Chansons d'Amour) is not a film operetta per se, director Christophe Honoré and composer/lyricist/vocalist Alex Beaupain use that film to pay homage to the French movie musical as conceived by Jacques Demy in his classic Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1967). The Honoré film concerns a series of hopelessly romantic Parisian characters who are unable to convey their feelings to one another in everyday situations, and who thus use musical numbers as outlets -- as vehicles of emotional expression. Beaupain composed the score; a number of the songs that are included appeared on one of his solo albums. The individual stories covered in the film tell age-worn tales as old as time: the loss of love, the discovery of new love, the impossibility of mutual love. The film stars Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, Chiara Mastroianni, Clotilde Hesme, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Brigitte Roüan, Jean-Marie Winling, and Yannick Renier. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

In a time of crisis, a young boy tries to make sense of the fine line between fantasy and reality in this drama from Spain. Nicolas (Ricardo Darin) is a toy designer who has married Ingrid (Irene Jacob), a scientist studying birds who has been raising her son Raul (Victor Valdivia) on her own since her husband was killed while serving in Iraq. Nicolas and Raul develop a close bond, and when the boy asks his new step-father about why his dad died, he tells the youngster stories about the fairies that be believed guided the world when he was a boy. Nicolas also shows Raul the shack he built in the woods where he used to go when he was troubled as a kid. While Nicolas's relationship with Ingrid falls apart, he remains close to Raul. One night, Nicolas befriends Sezar (Bebe), a clerk at a grocery store who is beaten when her unscrupulous boss is attacked by a gang of toughs while driving her home. With nowhere else for her to stay, Nicolas takes Sezar back to his shack so she can get a good night's sleep and clear her mind after the trauma. However, when Raul happens by the shack the next morning, he doesn't know what to make of its new occupant until he decides Sezar is one of the fairies Nicolas once believed in. La Educacion de las Hadas (aka The Education of Fairies) was adapted from the popular novel by Didier Van Cauwelaert). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Portuguese director Hugo Vieira da Silva's feature Body Rice joins Gus Van Sant's Gerry, Jose Maria de Orbe's The Straight Line, and other recent motion pictures that pontificate at length on the endless vapidity inherent in banal lives. Vieira da Silva chooses as his subject a cadre of German teenagers shuttled off to a social reintegration program in Portugal, where they wander endlessly through the countryside searching, in vain, for personal significance. Sylta Fee Wegmann, Julika Jenkins, and Alice Dwyer co-star. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Fernando Lopes, a leading figure of the Portuguese cinema's New Wave, wrote and directed this semi-improvised look at two strangers who find they share a common bond while traveling together. Dinis (Rogerio Samora) is a man in his 40's who is charmingly arrogant on the outside, but hides a deep-seated insecurity and carries the burden of some unpleasant secrets. While driving cross-country, Dinis meets Maria (Carla Chambel) at a rest stop; she's young, attractive and self-assured, and when she tells him she needs a ride, he offers to let her tag along. Both Dinis and Maria seem wary about sharing the details of their lives with one another, but in time they find common ground by talking about their families; both have troubled relationships with their parents but are searching for a way to mend their fences. Maria longs to visit her grandmother Pilar (Marcia Breia), and eventually Dinis grudging agrees to take her to her home. Pilar is a wise and compassionate woman whose warmth and generosity has an unexpected healing effect for both Maria and Dinis. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Raúl Ruiz's Klimt uses an amorphous, nonchronological narrative to cinematize events from the life of one of the 20th century's most profound artists: the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt (here portrayed by John Malkovich). Ruiz begins with Klimt's painful death from syphilis, and spends the remainder of the film transitioning, loosely and freely, between episodes that befell the painter. The film pays particularly strong attention to the artist's proclivity for scandalizing the European upper crust with overtly erotic subject matter and presentation, and his many affairs -- notably a lengthy one with his perpetual inspiration, Lea de Castro (Saffron Burrows). Throughout Klimt's life, a figure known as the Secretary (Stephen Dillane) comes and goes, who is actually a product of his fevered imagination -- and with whom the painter debates continually about the function of art in contemporary Western civilization, and the relevance of the artist. This enables Ruiz to create both a biographical sketch and a philosophical treatise. Visually, Ruiz and director of photography Ricardo Aronovich make the ambitious decision to recreate Klimt's style of painting on a cinematographic plane.

Unfortunately, difficulty befell this picture from the beginning, when the director (for some unascertainable reason) opted to draft the initial script in French, have it translated into German, and then have the German draft translated into English and revised by author Gilbert Adair -- rendering the dialogue stilted and unconvincing. Complications also arose on the distribution end. Still infuriated by the distributive mutilation that befell his previous film, the whopping Time Regained (and doubtless concerned that this might happen again), Ruiz pliantly struck a bargain with distributors for Klimt. He trimmed his original, 135-minute "director's cut" down to a 96-minute "producer's cut" for general consumption, which rendered much of the material less fluid and coherent. Both versions screened at the 2006 Rotterdam Film Festival. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Rodolphe Marcnoi's The Last Day concerns the troubled history of a family. Eighteen-year-old Simon (Gaspard Ulliel) meets the attractive 17-year-old Louise (Melanie Laurent) while he travels on a train to spend Christmas with his family. She joins him on his visit home. Simon's mother, Marie (Nicole Garcia), is happy to see her son, but dad (Christophe Malavoy) loves to complain and harass his family, and sister Alice (Alysson Paradis) competes fiercely with her brother. The family mistakenly believes that Simon and Louise are intimately involved with each other. Eventually, their interactions reveal buried truths about various members of the family. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

An attractive widow finds her attentions turning to her teenage son in a troubling manner in this drama from France. Pierre (Louis Garrel) is a moody 17-year-old who is spending the summer with his parents at their summer home in the Canary Islands. While Pierre isn't especially close to his father (Philippe Duclos), he enjoys a warm relationship with his mother, Hélène (Isabelle Huppert) -- almost too warm, as her affection for him subtly strains the boundaries of typical familial behavior. When Pierre's father dies unexpectedly in an auto accident, his emotional dependence on Hélène grows, while her desire for her son does the same. Though Pierre finds himself attracted to several girls his own age summering on the island, he finds it increasingly difficult to reconcile his curiosity with the growing sexual tension between mother and son. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

An expectant, ultra-modern mother living in 1913 Barcelona is thrust into a complex and labyrinthine mystery when her psychiatrist husband goes missing and she is forced to seek the help of her conservative brother-in-law in locating her missing spouse in director Joaquin Oristrell's Freudian period comedy. Alma is a modern woman of very modern means; her father Spain's foremost neurosurgeon and her husband, Leon, a devoted follower of controversial Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. After arriving home one summer afternoon to find her tearful husband mumbling incoherent words of woe, Alma's life is turned upside down when Leon suddenly disappears. With no one else to turn to than her lovelorn brother-in-law Salvador -- likewise a psychiatrist who secretly pines for Alma despite being married to her sister -- Alma's discovery of a strange manuscript on hysteria and female sexuality proves the launching point for a tireless quest to locate her missing husband and discover the true meaning behind his inexplicable disappearance. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A man who set out for Africa to fight in the name of Christ becomes an immortal legend when he disappears after confronting a Muslim sultan in director Manoel de Oliveira's adaptation of a play by Jose Regio. In the late 1570s, Dom Sebastiao (Ricardo Trepa) longed to establish a Portuguese empire, but in 1578 he vanished without a trace. In the years that follow Sebastiao's story evolves into the myth of the hidden king. Years later, in Portugal, Sebastiao makes a messianic return as a king on a white steed, with a mission to save humanity from an all-consuming darkness. Determined to extend his empire beyond the borders of Africa, Sebastiao subsequently leaves the country in order to realize his divine vision of a Christian Portuguese empire. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide