At the peak of her international career, Maria Enders is asked to perform in a revival of the play that made her famous twenty years ago. But back then she played the role of Sigrid, an alluring young girl who disarms and eventually drives her boss Helena to suicide. Now she is being asked to step into the other role, that of the older Helena. She departs with her assistant to rehearse in Sils Maria; a remote region of the Alps. A young Hollywood starlet with a penchant for scandal is to take find out more...

A retired American academic lives a quiet, ordered and repressed existence in a beautiful old Italian mansion, but this façade of tranquillity swiftly collapses when a decadent aristocratic family rent the apartment above, their lascivious lifestyle laying bare the torment that lurks beneath his exterior. 'The Conversation Piece' is a dark head trip of a journey, a claustrophobic and sexually charged drama heavy with the scent of irretreviably damaged lives. find out more...

Told partially in flashback we learn of a married Japanese man, Kengo, who is sent to manage forests in Indochina, during WW2. Here he meets a young typist, Yukiko, who falls hopelessly in love with him. Despite his promises when he returns to Tokyo it is to his wife that does so and he continues having heartless affairs, while Yukiko is forced to become the mistress of a GI and then a rich businessman, anything to survive. find out more...

Adapted from Zola's novel, this powerful tale concerns a triangle of love and murder in which a train driver becomes passionately involved with a femme fatale. With its images of trains and railways as symbols of human destiny this is a visually arresting film; Gallic and tragic. find out more...

The post-WW2 struggles of four fading Japanese beauties for whom the glamor of youth has passed; Kin has become a calculating cold-hearted money-lender, and even her best friends, fellow ex-Geishas Tomi, Nobu and Tamae, are in hock to her. She also has two former lovers pursuing her; one she wants to see and the other she doesn't, but when the former turns up he proves to be a great disappointment. Tomi and Tamae have children, but their relationships with them are troubled. Meanwhile Nobu and h find out more...

Adapted from three stories by Maupassant. 'Le Masque' describes how an old man wears a mask of youth at a dance hall to extend his youthful memories. 'La Maison Tellier', the longest episode, deals with a day's outing for the ladies from a brothel and a brief romance. In 'Le Modéle' the model in question jumps from a window for love of an artist, who then marries her. These three on old age, purity and marriage are shot with a supreme elegance and sympathy and the central tale in particular luxu find out more...

Huppert is stunning in perhaps her finest role as the eponymous Mme Bovary, a slave to her repressive bourgeois 19th Century existence, who, married to a chump, becomes notorious through her pursuit of love, excitement and liberation. Claude Chabrol's sumptuous, moving adaptation of Flaubert's classic novel sticks accurately to the story line. find out more...

After two years in an asylum Stephen Neale is released into the insanity that is WWII England, where he stumbles across a murderous spy ring and doesn't know whom he can trust. An atmospheric, expressionistic, war time thriller, packed with unforgettable scenes, starring Ray Milland and directed by the wilfully left-field genius that is Fritz Lang. find out more...

Life is crazy. You're crazy, I'm crazy, we're all crazy. We're all a little bit Minnie, and a little bit Moskowitz. Sometimes it does seem best to be sensible...but then what might you be missing out on? You gotta be you. You don't have to park cars and semi-randomly yell at people, but you can't hide yourself behind a veil (or dark sunglasses) and pretend and act like ever find out more...

A truly remarkable adaptation of Woolf's novel. Tilda Swanton is enthralling as the androgenous and ageless Orlando seeking love in a 400 year odyssey; from the finery of Elizabeth the First's court, through the Civil War, the early colonial period, the literary salons of 1750, by which time Orlando is a woman, the Victorian era of property, and finally to the present day. Potter's direction adds a marvellous period feel. Superb, this is a magical story . find out more...