My Mother

My Mother 2004

4.50

After his father's death, a young man is introduced to a world of hedonism and depravity by his amoral mother.

2004

Fidelity

Fidelity 2000

5.90

A talented photographer who lands a lucrative job in Paris with a scandal-mongering tabloid and becomes romantically involved with an eccentric children's book publisher while resisting the sexual advances of another photographer.

2000

L'ennui

L'ennui 1998

5.50

A philosophy teacher restless with the need to do something with his life meets a young woman suspected of driving an artist to his death. He finds the very simple Cecilia irritating but develops a sexual rapport with her. Obsessed with the need to own and tormented by her inability to respond to him, he becomes increasingly violent in a quest he can't name - a quest that slowly begins to undermine his certainties.

1998

Abraham's Valley

Abraham's Valley 1993

7.50

Ema is a very attractive but innocent girl, so pretty that cars crash in her presence. In her youth she marries Dr. Carlos Paiva, her father's friend, to whom she is not attracted. They move to the valley of Abraham. Carlos loves her, but decides to sleep in a separate room to avoid waking Ema when he has to return late at night. As time goes by she begins to feel unhappy about her marriage, so she finds a new lover.

1993

Lisbon Story

Lisbon Story 1994

7.15

Lisbon Story is Wim Wenders' homage to Lisbon and films. A sound engineer obtains a mysterious postcard from a friend who at the moment is filming a film in Lisbon. He sets out across Europe to find him and help him.

1994

A Talking Picture

A Talking Picture 2003

7.10

A meditation on civilization. July, 2001: friends wave as a cruise ship departs Lisbon for Mediterranean ports and the Indian Ocean. On board and on day trips in Marseilles, Pompeii, Athens, Istanbul, and Cairo, a professor tells her young daughter about myth, history, religion, and wars. Men approach her; she's cool, on her way to her husband in Bombay. After Cairo, for two evenings divided by a stop in Aden, the captain charms three successful, famous (and childless) women, who talk with wit and intellect, each understanding the others' native tongue, a European union. The captain asks mother and child to join them. He gives the girl a gift. Helena sings. Life can be sweet.

2003

Ossos

Ossos 1997

6.80

After a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts her baby’s safety to the troubled, deadbeat father, whose violent actions take the viewer on a tour of the foreboding, crumbling shantytown in which they live.

1997

Three Lives and Only One Death

Three Lives and Only One Death 1996

6.50

Four intertwining stories of bizarre occurrences in Paris featuring a man who was stolen away by fairies, a professor who becomes a tramp, the lovers who inherit a chateau – and the last tale that connects all that has gone before.

1996

This Is My Body

This Is My Body 2001

4.90

Gifted student Antoine goes against his family’s wishes and accepts the lead role in a controversial director’s film. He learns that the role had previously been offered to a young man who committed suicide after an on-set affair – and events conspire to draw Antoine towards the same lover.

2001

Fragile as the World

Fragile as the World 2001

7.60

An impossible love. Two young people who love each other. Vera and João can’t find in this life the space, time, or identity to resolve their love story.

2001

I’m Going Home

I’m Going Home 2001

6.90

The comfortable daily routines of aging Parisian actor Gilbert Valence, 76, are suddenly shaken when he learns that his wife, daughter, and son-in-law have been killed in a car crash. Having to take care of his now-orphaned grandson, he struggles to go on with his lifelong acting career like he's used to. But the roles he is offered -- a flashy TV show and a hectic last-minute replacement in an English-language film of Joyce's Ulysses -- finally convince him that it's time to retire.

2001

Voyage to the Beginning of the World

Voyage to the Beginning of the World 1997

6.78

Manoel is an aging film director who travels with the film crew through Portugal in search of the origins of Afonso, a famous French actor whose father emigrated from Portugal to France and in process remembers his own youth.

1997

Genealogies of a Crime

Genealogies of a Crime 1997

6.60

An attorney defends a young man on trial for killing his aunt — a psychiatrist who took him in to study possible homicidal tendencies.

1997

Unconscious

Unconscious 2004

7.00

A Freudian comedy set in Barcelona, 1913, that playfully questions sexual taboos through a Sherlock Holmes-style investigation.

2004

The Letter

The Letter 1999

5.85

A well-bred, lovely, spiritual, sad young woman marries an attentive physician who loves her. She feels affection but no love. Soon after, without design, she falls in love with Pedro Abrunhosa, a poet and performance artist. He also loves her. She keeps her distance from him, confessing her love to a friend who is a nun and, later, to her husband. Hunger for her love and jealousy consume him; she attends him as he wastes away. With his death, she can marry and express her passion, but what she does and how she explains herself, particularly to her cloistered friend, is at the heart of the film. Glimpses of convent life and of Abrunhosa on stage give contrast and mute comment.

1999

The Convent

The Convent 1995

5.40

The journey of Michael Padovic, an American professor who arrives with his wife, Helene, at a Portuguese convent where he expects to find the documents needed to prove his theory: Shakespeare was born in Spain; not in England.

1995

Anxiety

Anxiety 1998

6.40

An anthology film drama featuring a poetic mirror structure based on existential identity. In "The Immortals," adapted from a Helder Prista Monteiro play, two famous doctors, an 80-year-old father, and his 60-year-old son, contemplate senility and death. "Suzy," from an Antonio Patricio story, is set in the '30s when a young courtesan dies on the operating table. "Mother of the River" is from an Agustina Bessa-Luis fable about eternal life.

1998

The Fatalist

The Fatalist 2005

3.60

The complex relationship between master and servant is explored in director João Botelho's adaptation of Denis Diderot's popular novel Jacques le Fataliste et Son Maître. As Tiago (Rogério Samora) drives his master (André Gomes) through the Portuguese countryside to an unspecified destination, the traveling pair embark on a series of highly philosophical discussions. Flowing with tales of his life in the military and previous sexual escapades, Tiago trades a series of tales with his rapt passenger, including the story of a vengeful spurned lover who plots revenge on the nobleman who rejected her by transforming a prostitute into a society lady and convincing him to marry the tainted bride.

2005

No, or the Vain Glory of Command

No, or the Vain Glory of Command 1990

6.10

Episodes from entire military history of Portugal are told through flashbacks as a professorish soldier recounts them while marching through a Portuguese African colony in 1973.

1990