Paulo Branco Movies

Seasoned Paris hustler Vassili finds his brutal past returning with a vengeance after falling for a man he discovers unconscious in a local cruising area, and nursing the handsome stranger back to health. When the young man recovers, the two men hit the streets as prostitutes, and begin robbing their clients. Later, an act of violence from Vassili's past threatens to have tragic repercussions, forcing the two criminals to flee the city. But no matter how far Vassili runs, his demons always seem to catch up with him. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A small town hospital worker who witnessed a brutal rape becomes obsessed with the victim after she lands a job as a nurse at the same hospital where he works, but how far will he go before he finally loses control? Leon Okrasa was there when a young woman named Anna was viciously violated. He works at a hospital in Poland, and when Anna is hired in as a nurse Leon soon finds his fixation taking over every aspect of his life. One night, after climbing into Anna's apartment though an open window, Leon sits on the edge of her bed, watching silently as she sleeps. What happens next only Leon can say. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A successful American novelist who has retreated into the country following the publication of his most recent book meets a most mysterious muse in director/screenwriter Paul Auster's elliptic psychological drama. His latest novel an instant success, famous author Martin Frost (David Thewlis) decides to celebrate by spending some quality down time in a remote country home. Awakening his first morning in the house, Martin is shocked to find that he is sharing his bed with a stunningly beautiful woman. Over the course of the next few days, Martin becomes increasingly fascinated with the mysterious visitor's radiating beauty and acute intelligence - eventually falling deeply in love with her. Could this woman who possesses an uncanny knowledge of Martin's life and work perhaps be the muse who will inspire his greatest work? The closer Martin tries to get to the woman the further she seems to drift away, a disturbing development that eventually leads the author to suspect that she is a figment of his imagination or a ghost that has somehow gained access to his most intimate thoughts. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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, Rovi

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, Rovi

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, Rovi

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, Rovi

Director Chantal Akerman helmed this offbeat comedy about a mother and daughter who find themselves living together again for the first time in many years. Still reeling emotionally from the recent death of her husband, Catherine (Aurore Clément) has chosen to leave her old home and move in with her grown daughter, Charlotte (Sylvie Testud). While Charlotte is sympathetic, she's something less than enthusiastic; her mother's mood swings and the clutter of her collected belongings are cramping her home and her style, and when Catherine decides to revive her career as a piano teacher, the constant parade of youngsters bludgeoning the keyboard makes it all but impossible for Charlotte to complete her latest writing project. Catherine and Charlotte decide to look for more spacious living quarters, while Charlotte is also in search of her own office space. As a steady stream of prospective tenants check out their home, Charlotte makes friends with a pregnant woman looking for a new flat (Natacha Régnier), while her search for a space of her own brings Charlotte a relationship with a like-minded realtor (Jean-Pierre Marielle) and an unlikely collaborator in Michelle (Elsa Zylberstein), a poet who enjoys tinkering with Charlotte's prose. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi