A Summer's Tale

Magali, forty-something, is a winemaker and a widow: she loves her work but feels lonely. Her friends Rosine and Isabelle both want secretly to find a husband for Magali.

The story of an introverted young girl just reaching adulthood who takes a liking to an older woman she meets at a party and determines to match her off with her father, despite the latter's already having a lover of his own.

Felicie and Charles have a whirlwind holiday romance. Due to a mix-up on addresses they lose contact, and five years later at Christmas-time Felicie is living with her mother in a cold Paris with a daughter as a reminder of that long-ago summer. For male companionship she oscillates between hairdresser Maxence and the intellectual Loic, but seems unable to commit to either as the memory of Charles and what might have been hangs over everything.

The wife of Nasim, an Afghan immigrant in Iran, is gravely ill. He needs money to pay for her care, but his day labor digging wells does not pay enough. A friend connects Nasim to a two-bit promoter who sells tickets to watch Nasim ride a bicycle continuously for a week. The promoter brings in sick and aged spectators, haranguing them to find hope in Nasim's strength. Aided by his son, who feeds him as he rides, Nasim grinds out the days and shivering nights. Local officials believe this may be a plot and Nasim may be a spy; they try to sabotage him as do those who bet he won't finish the week. Will desperation alone get Nasim the money? Is any triumph an illusion?

Three stories of love and coincidence around the theme of dates in Paris.

Percy, upon being released from prison, goes to the small town of Gillead, to find a place where she can start over again. She is taken in by Hannah, to help out at her place, the Spitfire Grill. Percy brings change to the small town, stirring resentment and fear in some, and growth in others.

The fictional life and career of a famous actress in Chinese opera, a woman who goes against tradition by specializing in playing male roles, especially that of Zhang Kui, a benevolent ghost who appears in several Chinese operas. Although the actress's career brings wealth and fame, it is attained only through considerable struggle against an anti-female system and an unhappy personal life.

Jonas has had enough of his excesses and love affairs, which is why he wants to build a solid life as a construction worker in his friend's company. But he hasn't reckoned with strip club owner Victor Varona, who recognizes Jonas' seductive stripper qualities in his sweaty construction work. It comes as it must: Jonas gets into the business and starts swinging his hips at night until he falls in love with his son's soccer coach...

In the rebellious northern frontier province of colonial India, British Army Captain Scott, a young prince and the boy's governess escape by an obsolete train as they are relentlessly pursued by Muslim rebels intent on assassinating the prince.

Child's Pose is a contemporary drama focusing on the relationship between a mother and her 32-year-old son. After the accidental killing of a boy in a car crash, the mother tries to prevent her son being charged for the death, and she refuses to accept that her son is a grown-up man.

The plot is about a trial against three men who tried to earn loads of money by illegal methods to get to Canada and about the lawyers and the judge who get on with the trial and who are being unfaithful to their couples.

In Le Livre d’Image, Jean-Luc Godard recycles existing images (films, documentaries, paintings, television archives, etc.), quotes excerpts from books, uses fragments of music. The driving force is poetic rhyme, the association or opposition of ideas, the aesthetic spark through editing, the keystone. The author performs the work of a sculptor. The hand, for this, is essential. He praises it at the start. “There are the five fingers. The five senses. The five parts of the world (…). The true condition of man is to think with his hands. Jean-Luc Godard composes a dazzling syncopation of sequences, the surge of which evokes the violence of the flows of our contemporary screens, taken to a level of incandescence rarely achieved. Crowned at Cannes, the last Godard is a shock film, with twilight beauty.