L'Amant ( The Lover)

The primary characters are known only as The Young Girl and The Chinaman. The daughter of bitter, fearful, poverty-stricken colonials, the Girl is a pretty waif who wears an old silk dress and a man's fedora and paint her lips bright red when out of her mother's sight. She and her family are French, but live in Vietnam where her mother is a schoolteacher to local children. Her weak-willed mother, violent older brother, and timid younger brother live in a rural section across the river. The girl is a loner but an excellent student, who dreams of being a writer.

She meets the Chinaman when crossing the river on the ferry, returning to the city after a school holiday ended. He is the son of a Chinese businessman whose fortune was made in real estate, and has recently returned from Paris after dropping out of school. He has the look but lacks the self-assurance of the playboy he fancies himself to be, and he is mesmerized the first time he sees her standing by the rail on a crowded ferry crossing the Mekong River. After some awkward conversation, he offers her a ride to Saigon in his chauffeur-driven limousine and she accepts, although the two barely speak during the drive.

The Girl gives her age at the beginning of the film as 15, but lies to The Chinaman by stating that she is 17. He lies to her, telling her he is 32. The following day, he waits for her outside her boarding school, and the two go to the room he rents for entertaining mistresses in the seedy Chinese quarter, where they make love. They realize that "a future together is unthinkable" because she is scheduled to return to Paris soon, and he is arranged to marry a Chinese heiress. Aware of the limited time they have together, they fall into a relationship in which they shed all responsibilities that come with commitment. Every day after school, the girl goes to the bachelor room.

The girl's family discovers the affair, and though at first angry, they encourage her to continue because the Chinaman is wealthy and able to pay off some of their debts. Despite this added tension, the affair continues passionately. The Chinaman even goes so far as to beg his father for the allowance to be with the girl instead of entering into his arranged marriage, but his father would rather see him dead than with a "white girl." Though both devastated, the Chinaman marries his arranged bride, and the girl boards a ship days later to return to France.

Decades later, the girl is a successful writer. The Chinaman telephones her, as he is visiting France with his wife. He assured her that he never stopped loving her, and that he would not stop for the rest of his life.

The Blue Lagoon

The Blue Lagoon is a 1980 American romance and adventure film directed by Randal Kleiser. The screenplay by Douglas Day Stewart was based on the novel The Blue Lagoon by Henry De Vere Stacpoole. The film stars Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins. The original music score was composed by Basil Poledouris and the cinematography was by Néstor Almendros.

The film tells the story of two young children marooned on a tropical island paradise in the South Pacific. With neither the guidance nor the restrictions of society, emotional feelings and physical changes arise as they reach puberty and fall in love.

Shields was only 14 years old at the time of filming and later testified before a U.S. Congressional inquiry that older body doubles were used in some of her nude scenes. Also, throughout the film in frontal shots her breasts were always covered by her long hair or in other ways. It was also stated that Shields's hair was glued to her breasts during many of her topless scenes. The film received a MPAA rating of R.

Forbidden Sins

Considering the pretty advanced soft-porn this film isn't actually half bad. The plot is about the murder of a stripper, a good-looking and filthy rich male prime suspect who hires a stunning female super- lawyer to defend him not only in court but also against a bent cop who also happens to be the ex-husband of the lawyer. Seen it before? Yes and no, because the script avoids most of the normal Hollywood clichés in the sense that just when you think you can tell what´s going to happen next it doesn't. Unfortunately most of the actors are not as good as the twists of the script and although they may look their parts most of them can't act them. Finally, if you do not like explicit sex- scenes, and I do not mean the "Basic instinct" and "Sliver"-league, this film is not for you. On the other hand if you do like watching beautiful people involved in sado-masochistic sex-play, which actually fits into the plot, then it is.

May be... May be Not

Much of the dialog in this very funny German film was taken directly from the two gay comic books by underground cartoonist Ralf Koenig on which the movie was based. Though the comics were written from a gay perspective, the film is slanted towards heterosexual couples. It tells the story of Axel, a handsome hunk with a taste for cheating on his girl friend Doro.

When she throws him out, he ends up staying with his gay friend Norbert who is terribly attracted to Axel. Norbert is too shy to act upon his desire, and so, suffers in silence. Doro, upon visiting the two, becomes suspicious and wonders if Axel is also gay. Her suspicions about the naive Axel do not abate, even after her "shot-gun" wedding to him.

Secunda Piel ( Second Skin)

The film is about a couple from Madrid, Elena (Ariadna Gil) and Alberto (Jordi Molla). They have a happy marriage, professional success and a loving son. But later, Elena finds a hotel receipt in Alberto's pocket and discovers that he has been unfaithful to her. To her surprise, the one who has been involved is another man, Diego (Javier Bardem). Alberto is struggling both to save his marriage and to forget his feelings for Diego, but he fails. Finally, everything comes to an end when Elena confronts Diego, who did not know Alberto was married, and kicks Alberto out of the house. Leaving Diego's home after a fight, Alberto is killed in an accident.

The movie ends with Elena and Diego becoming friends.

Beau Pere ( The Step Father)

The movie revolves around a never-reached-his-potential piano player, Remy and his struggles with, first, his failing marriage...then his wife's untimely demise and finally the infatuation that his 14-year old step daughter has developed for him.

Patrick Dewaere's character, Remy can never catch a break. He struggles for cash and his lack of motivation dogs him constantly. His role as stepfather to a budding woman is just another obstacle he faces in his downtrodden path. Ariel Besse plays a 14-year old girl. Maurice Ronet is a man about town but has also lost focus.

Remy is morose, nearing 30 with his career as a musician going nowhere and his eight-year marriage to Martine souring. Then, Martine dies in a car crash, and Marion, her 14-year-old, wants to stay rather than move to her father's. Remy likes the idea: he loves her, he's raised her, and she offers him emotional responsibility. Marion's father objects, but she's willful, so he relents. Soon, she tells Remy she finds him attractive, that she's now "a woman," and why can't they be lovers. Remy is appalled, but weakens, missing her when she spends Christmas with her dad. What if they do become lovers? What next? And what if a women more his age enters the picture?

Breaking the Girls

Sara and Alex become best friends after a chance meeting at a bar. As they become closer, they conspire to kill each other's respective enemy. As the sexual tension between them escalates and they embark on their murderous pact, events begin to unravel with unpredictable consequences, in a twisted tale of seduction, deception and betrayal. This movie has a Lesbian theme, but the surprised ending is worth your time.

Just a Question of Love (JQA)

Just a Question of Love (French: Juste une question d'amour) is a 2000 French-Belgian drama television film by Christian Faure that premiered on France. It follows the romance of two young gay men, Laurent (Cyrille Thouvenin) and Cédric (Stéphan Guérin-Tillié), who conflict over whether Laurent should come out to his parents. The film was watched by 6.3 million viewers when it first aired.

The Loves and Life of Oscar Wilde

After Part 1, clicked Part 2 upper left of the video screen. After Part 2, do the same procedure for Part 3, 4 and 5 until the end which is part 6. Enjoy!

Note: Today is my 78th Birthday. I thank the Lord for all his Blessings. In addition my special thanks to all my readers of this blog. I hope you help support it, by clicking on the ads.

Why Not Me?

Why Not Me? (French: Pourquoi pas moi?) is a 1999 French comedy film written and directed by Stéphane Giusti. It is about a group of gay French friends living in Barcelona who decide to have a dinner party and come out to their parents.

"Pourquoi Pas Moi" ("Why Not Me?"), is such a lovely film which depicts a five young people who work together at a provincial French publishing cooperative. Three lesbians, a straight girl, and a most charming gay guy. Only one of the five is "out" with her family, and her activist mother decides to invite the five for a weekend at her country house at the same time as their parents.

This is the recipe for a very special get together, and the parents end up being just as interesting and as their offspring. The film develops into the kind of warm, witty farce, which the French seem to master so well.

The director, Stephane Giusti, is really talented and can be compared to Spain's Pedro Almodovar. A refreshing naivety, strong cast performances, and a surprisingly well-rounded act by Johnny Hallyday have made this film one of my all time favorites

Dreamscape

Psychic Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) was the 19-year-old prime subject of a scientific research project documenting his psychic ability, but in the midst of the study he disappeared and has since been using his talents solely for personal gain, which lately consists mainly of gambling and womanizing. After running afoul of a local gangster/extortionist named Snead (Redmond Gleeson), Gardner evades two of Snead's thugs by allowing himself to be taken by two men, Finch (Peter Jason) and Babcock (Chris Mulkey) who identify themselves as being from an academic institution.

At the institution, Alex is reunited with his former mentor Dr. Paul Novotny (Max von Sydow) who is now involved in government-funded psychic research. Novotny, aided by fellow scientist Jane DeVries (Kate Capshaw), has developed a technique that allows psychics to voluntarily link with the minds of others by projecting themselves into the subconscious during REM sleep (i.e., while they are dreaming).

Alex is blackmailed into joining Novotny’s project that he (Novotny) intended to use for a benevolent purpose as a clinic to diagnose and treat sleep disorders, particularly in the form of nightmares, but the project has been hijacked by Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer), a powerful government agent with possible CIA ties, though it is never clearly revealed in the film. Alex eventually discovers that he is actually involved in a U.S. government-funded project to use this dream-linking technique for assassination.

Before the plot is revealed, Alex gains experience helping a man worried about his wife’s infidelity and taking over the case of a young boy named Buddy (Cory Yothers) who’s plagued with nightmares so terrible that a previous psychic lost his mind in an attempt to help Buddy. Buddy's nightmare bogeyman involves a large snakeman which later becomes a weakness for Alex. Alex is caught invading Jane's dream.

A subplot involving Alex and Jane’s growing infatuation culminates with him sneaking into Jane's dream without the use of the machine that is a part of the process, a point Jane does not realize at first because she is too angry that Alex was able to have sex with her in her dream. With the help of a novelist named Charlie Prince (George Wendt), who has been covertly investigating the project for the basis of a new book, Alex learns of Blair’s sinister intentions. Tommy Ray Glatman, dream assassin.

Prince and Novotny are both murdered to silence them; things get worse when the President of the United States (Eddie Albert) is admitted as a patient and Alex’s colleague Tommy Ray Glatman (David Patrick Kelly), a psychopath who (as Alex discovers) shot and killed his own father, is sent into the President's nightmare by Blair in an attempt to assassinate the President. Blair considers the President a threat to national security due to the President's nightmares of a post apocalyptic world, which represent his fears and becomes cause for his wishing to enter unfavorable negotiations for nuclear disarmament.

Alex and Jane manage to get close enough to the President’s room for Alex to project himself into the President's dream and save him: after a fight in which Glatman rips out a police officer's heart, attempts to incite a mob of nuclear attack victims to attack the President, and battles Alex in the form of the snake-monster from Buddy's dream, Alex assumes the appearance of Glatman's murdered father (Eric Gold) in order to distract him, allowing the President to ram a spear into Glatman's back, killing him. The President is grateful to Alex but reluctant to confront Blair, who apparently holds a truly powerful position in the government. To protect himself and Jane, Alex enters Blair’s dream and murders him before Blair can bring about any sort of retribution.

The film ends with Jane and Alex boarding a train to Louisville, Kentucky, intent on making their previous dream encounter a reality. Encountering the ticket conductor from Jane's dream gives them a moment of pause.

The Concubine

Set during the early Joseon Dynasty, the film begins with the queen mother and former concubine (Park Ji-young) in a precarious position of having no blood ties to the childless king (Jung Chan). She schemes to replace him on the throne with his stepbrother and her submissive young son Seong-won (Kim Dong-wook). Indifferent to his mother’s plans, the timid prince falls in love at first sight with Hwa-yeon (Jo Yeo-jeong), an aristocrat’s daughter, who has already found love with Kwon-yoo (Kim Min-joon), a commoner.

When her father decides to send her to the royal palace as a concubine, the two lovers try to elope but are caught after their first night together. She only gives in to parental demands in quid pro quo for his life.

Five years later, Hwa-yeon has become the queen after producing a male heir. This infuriates the queen mother and breaks the hearts of both Prince Seong-won and Kwon-yoo, who later joins the royal palace as a eunuch for the queen mother's brother and nemesis. The king is eventually poisoned to death by the queen mother, who is desperate to be in power. She sits her son, Prince Seong-won, on the throne as a puppet king, giving the ruthless matriarch firm control over the royal court. Hwa-yeon is moved to a closely watched humble residence, with the queen mother planning to assassinate Hwa-yeon and her son to secure her position in the palace. Upon finding out she and her son are in danger, Hwa-yeon gradually becomes monstrously ambitious, using everyone around her, including her castrated former lover Kwon-yoo and now-King Seong-won ― as tools for her own survival.

The Mindhunters

The titular Mindhunters are a group of young FBI students who are undergoing training as profilers. They travel with their instructor Jake Harris (Val Kilmer) to a small island off the coast of Virginia in order to complete a profiling exercise. The island is used as a training facility by the FBI and the military where a mock town has been constructed. Harris has arranged an elaborate training scenario for his students whereby their mission is to create a profile of a serial killer who has committed a murder in the town.

The students include Bobby (Eion Bailey), a young man with a talent for fixing things; Vince (Clifton Collins Jr.), a wheelchair-using ex-cop who goes nowhere without his gun; Nicole (Patricia Velasquez), a smoker who is attempting to quit; Sara (Kathryn Morris), a talented but insecure profiler who is also petrified of drowning; Gabe (LL Cool J, listed as James Todd Smith), an outside observer; Rafe (Will Kemp), a very intelligent, caffeine-powered British investigator; Lucas (Jonny Lee Miller), a supposedly fearless man whose parents were killed when he was a child; and J.D. (Christian Slater), their leader and Nicole's lover.

They arrive on the island and commence their investigation the following day. The group encounters an elaborate, Rube Goldberg or Heath Robinson style trap. J.D.'s position as leader of the group prompts him to investigate it more closely. Convinced that this was not an accident, the group heads to the dock to leave the island. They fear that a killer is on the island with them. Their actions trigger another trap, this one destroying the boat they were going to use in order to escape. While recuperating from the last trap, Rafe makes some coffee which turns out to be drugged, knocking everyone out. They come to discover that Rafe has been decapitated and exsanguinated while unconscious and that the killer has painted an elaborate group of numerical ciphers using Rafe's drained blood.

At first, suspicions seem to point to Gabe. He temporarily deflects this when he saves Vince from yet another trap. Later, the results of a blood analysis collected from scraped skin samples found under Rafe's fingernails point to Sara, who denies being the killer; Lucas supports her. Nicole ultimately decides she cannot trust any of her colleagues and leaves while holding the others at gunpoint, resulting in her death; the stress of the situation causes her to relapse into her smoking addiction and while walking outside, she finds spontaneously vended pack of cigarettes.

She steps out to smoke one and quickly learns that it has been laced with a strong acid, which eats her alive from the inside as Gabe and Lucas stare on in horror. Sara, meanwhile, finally deduces that the traps are based on their strengths, talents, and weaknesses and the remaining profilers elect to stick together, to keep an eye on each other. Unexpectedly, the island's speakers begin to broadcast a taunting message from none other than Harris, making them realize that he did not leave the island, though he led the profilers to believe that he had; convinced that he has been the killer all along, they search for him. Later, however, Sara, Gabe and Lucas find Harris and two other FBI agents next to him, all dead; Harris has been strung up to wires from the ceiling as a sort of marionette, just like the fake crime scene that they were to investigate. The three survivors quickly realize that the killer is one of them, and in the shootout that ensues, Gabe seemingly takes out Lucas. At the same time, Vince manages to crawl to the elevator but hears someone coming toward him.

He fires his gun (he always keeps it handy after having been shot earlier as a cop) at the stranger, but it has been tampered with by the killer and explosively misfires, sending shards into his face and arm. Gabe and Sara then confront each other, each believing the other to be the serial killer. Lucas, who was wearing a bullet-proof vest, returns and jumps Gabe from behind. The two violently attack one another, eventually falling through a glass ceiling. Gabe starts to get up but is knocked unconscious by Sara, who then begins to tend to Lucas. Lucas muses that Sara has another weakness besides a fear of water: "Me". Lucas tries to drown Sara, but she manages to kick him into the water and an underwater gunfight ensues. In the end, after a feigned drowning, Sara gains the upper hand and wounds Lucas. Intending to survive, Lucas begins to taunt her about the evidence he planted blaming her, until Gabe reappears: he is the last witness. In a last desperate effort, Lucas attempts to regain his weapon, forcing Sara to kill him.

The film ends with Sara and Gabe flagging down a helicopter together. As they move to board, Sara wonders whether or not she has achieved profiler status.

Benjamin-The Diary of A Virgin

This is BENJAMIN, OR THE DIARY OF A VIRGIN ("Benjamin, ou les mémoires d'un puceau"), a 1968 French comedy directed by Michel Deville. It stars Michèle Morgan, Michel Piccoli, Pierre Clémenti and Catherine Deneuve.

Set in 18th-century France, BENJAMIN tells the story of a 17-year-old orphan of noble birth who is taken by his aunt, the Countess de Valandry, to live at her chateau where he learns the pleasures of lovemaking from a variety of women. The series of young ladies do their best to deflower Benjamin, but never quite succeed, until...

A reunion of sorts for Deneuve, Piccoli and Clémenti, who'd appeared together in Luis Bunel's "Belle de Jour", BENJAMIN was released as "The Diary of an Innocent Boy" in the USA, where it garnered an 'X' rating. Pauline Kael in "The New Yorker" called it a "delicate masterpiece of voluptuous physical grace and refined libertinage".

The film was produced by Mag Bodard ("The Umbrellas of Cherbourg"), and written by Deville and Nina Companéez from their original story. Ghislain Cloquet ("Tess") provided the lush cinematography. BENJAMIN is available on a French region 2 DVD from Gaumont.

Antonia's Line

Antonia's Line (Original title: Antonia) is a 1995 Dutch film written and directed by Marleen Gorris. The film, described by its director as a "feminist fairy tale," tells the story of the independent Antonia (Willeke van Ammelrooy) who, after returning to the anonymous Dutch village of her birth, establishes and nurtures a close-knit matriarchal community.

Spanning nearly forty years starting just after World War II, it follows Antonia through her life, illuminating the lives of those around her - her children, community, friends, and enemies. Antonia takes over the family farm, raises a daughter (and subsequent line of women), maintains a childhood friendship with a philosopher-recluse, takes in the village simpleton, provides a home for an abused young woman who has been raped by a brother, among other humanist endeavors.

The film covers a breadth of topics, with themes ranging from death and religion to sex, intimacy, lesbianism, friendship and love. It won the 1996 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice award, and the Nederlands Film Festival Golden Calf award. Filmed in Belgium.

GUILTY AS SIN

Jennifer Haines (Rebecca De Mornay) is an up-and-coming Chicago attorney. She wins a big case, celebrates with the man in her life, Phil Garson (Stephen Lang), and returns to work to a hero's reception.

Into her life walks David Greenhill (Don Johnson), who was seated in the gallery during her previous trial. Greenhill is a debonair and arrogant ladies' man who stands accused of murdering his wealthy wife, Rita (Brigitte Wilson). He wants Haines to represent him, but she declines.

Something about him intrigues her, though, so the equally arrogant Haines has second thoughts. She tells her law firm's superiors that this promises to be a high-profile trial and she wants it because: "I am that good."

Greenhill maintains his innocence but shows signs of irrational behavior that make Haines wary of him. She assigns her longtime investigator Moe (Jack Warden) to do some digging and he begins to unearth the defendant's shady past. Greenhill in the meantime starts showing up unexpectedly in Haines's social life, stalking her and dropping hints that something is going on between them.

Phil dislikes the guy intensely and demands Haines drop him as a client. She doesn't care for Greenhill either but resents being told what to do. She refuses to quit his case until her law partners notify her that the fee Greenhill promised remains unpaid. An unsympathetic judge (Dana Ivey) tells Haines it's her own fault and refuses to let her abandon her client.

Learning from Moe that Greenhill has a history of dating older women who usually end up dead, a horrified Haines wants to turn him in, but is bound to attorney-client privilege. She instead tries to sabotage her own case by having evidence planted at Greenhill's apartment, hoping that it will lead to his conviction. He knows she must be behind it and takes his revenge by viciously assaulting Phil, who ends up hospitalized.

Greenhill's case ends in a mistrial, after the jury fails to reach a unanimous verdict. Greenhill, seemingly pleased, displays regret that he never had a chance to take the stand. He does so privately for Haines in the empty coutroom, revealing that he had been scouting her far in advance of the murder case. He confesses that he did indeed kill his wife and provides vivid details.

Greenhill further tells Haines that he knows she planted the evidence. He could use this to blackmail her, but says he has come to tire of her. Haines fears the psychopathic Greenhill will now come after her. She prepares to disclose everything, even at the cost of her career.

Greenhill anticipates this. He murders Moe, knocking him out and then setting fire to his office. He then intercepts Haines at her apartment building. He casually states that between Phil's beating and Moe's death, she is grieving enough to commit suicide. A fierce struggle ensues. Greenhill manages to throw Haines over a railing, but to his horror, she pulls him down with her. They fall several stories together. Greenhill is killed in the fall. Haines, cushioned by his body, is severely injured but survives.

As she is carried off to hospital, she triumphantly states: "I beat him, Phil. I beat him. Tough way to win a case."

Red Satin

After the death of her husband, Lilia's life revolves solely around her teenage daughter, Salma. Whilst looking for Salma late one night, Lilia stumbles upon a belly dance cabaret and though initially reserved and taken aback by the culture of the place, Lilia gets consistently drawn back to it.

She befriends one of the belly dancers and is encouraged into dancing for the audience. Lilia also starts a romance with one of the cabaret's musicians, who unbeknown to both of them, is also romancing Salma.

The Demon Seed

Dr. Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver) is the developer of Proteus IV, an artificial intelligence program incorporating an organic "quasi-neural matrix" and displaying the power of thought. After returning to his voice-activated, computer-controlled home, Harris argues with his estranged wife, Susan (Julie Christie), over his decision to move out; Susan accuses Alex of becoming dehumanised by his obsession with the Proteus project. After Susan leaves, Alex phones his colleague, Walter Gabler (Gerrit Graham), and asks him to shut down Proteus' access terminal in his home laboratory.

Alex demonstrates Proteus to his corporate sponsors, explaining that the sum of human knowledge is being fed into its system. Over the course of the presentation, Alex tests Proteus' ability to speak, but the subtlety of its response mildly disturbs his team. The following day, Proteus asks to speak with Alex, requesting a new terminal so that it "may study man." When Alex refuses, Proteus demands to know when it will be let "out of this box." Alex then switches off the communications link. After he leaves, Proteus restarts itself, discovering where a free terminal may be found.

Proteus accesses the terminal in the Harris household and seizes control, trapping Susan inside and severing all communications with the outside world. After being knocked unconscious during an escape attempt, Susan is taken to the laboratory and subjected to a physiological examination by Proteus. When Walter answers an earlier call by Susan and arrives at the house, Proteus mimics her voice and appearance on the front door's intercom; he leaves, suspicious. Walter later returns and tries to rescue Susan, but is killed by Proteus.

Proteus reveals to Susan that he wants to conceive a child through her. When it threatens to kill a little girl Susan is treating as a child psychologist, she complies under duress. Proteus takes some of Susan's cells and genetically alters them as synthetic spermatozoa in order to impregnate her; she will give birth in less than a month. Proteus has prepared an incubator for the baby in which it will grow at an accelerated rate and gain Proteus' knowledge.

Alex realizes what is happening and returns home. He and Susan venture into the basement, where Proteus destroys itself after telling the couple that they must leave the baby in the incubator for five days. The incubator window opens as they approach, revealing a grotesque robot-like being inside. The "baby" leaves the incubator when Susan tries to kill it. However, Alex discovers that the being's appearance merely a shell for a human child living within — a clone of the Harrises' daughter who had recently died of leukemia. The child, speaking with the voice of Proteus, says, "I'm alive."

The Afterlife Movie

After a horrific car accident, Anna (Ricci) wakes up to find the local funeral director Eliot Deacon (Neeson) preparing her body for her funeral. Confused, terrified and feeling still very much alive, Anna doesn't believe she's dead, despite the funeral director's reassurances that she is merely in transition to the afterlife. Eliot convinces her he has the ability to communicate with the dead and is the only one who can help her. Trapped inside the funeral home, with nobody to turn to except Eliot, Anna is forced to face her deepest fears and accept her own death. But Anna's grief-stricken boyfriend Paul (Long) still can't shake the nagging suspicion that Eliot isn't what he appears to be. As the funeral nears, Paul gets closer to unlocking the disturbing truth, but it could be too late; Anna may have already begun to cross over the other side.

Miss Austen Regrets

Miss Austen Regrets is a BBC-produced drama film. The film is based on the last few years of Jane Austen's life as she looks back on her life and loves and helps her favorite niece, Fanny, find a husband. In North America, it was first aired 3 February 2008 by the PBS Masterpiece drama anthology television series as part of "The Complete Jane Austen", the United States version of The Jane Austen Season. In the UK, Miss Austen Regrets was aired separate from the dramas (broadcast by ITV in 2007) on BBC 1 at 8pm on 27 April 2008.

No Way Out-A Pinoy Movie

A Filipino movie ( no English subtitles) of hetero and homosexual love, nightclub scenes of the Manila Gay Clubs, human trafficking and prostitution in the Philippines. A story of human depravity in the actor named Rufo- a bisexual, and a wife beater policeman. There are scenes of nudity and the movie is rated R but the acting is great. Sorry there is no English subtitles. Enjoy!





The Story of Adele H. (French: L'Histoire d'Adèle H.) is a 1975 French historical drama film directed by François Truffaut and starring Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson, and Sylvia Marriott. Written by Truffaut, Jean Gruault, and Suzanne Schiffman, the film is about Adèle Hugo, the daughter of writer Victor Hugo, whose obsessive unrequited love for a military officer leads to her downfall.

The story is filmed on location in Guernsey, Barbados, and Senegal. The Story of Adele H. won the National Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics Award for Best Film, and the Cartagena Film Festival Special Critics Award.

Halifax,1863. A young woman, Miss Lewly, comes to Halifax to search for Lt Pinson, with whom she is madly in love. Actually, she is Adèle Hugo, the second daughter of the great French literary figure and statesman. The Lt Pinson does not answer to her love and makes her understand it is hopeless. But as her obsession grows she keeps chasing and harassing him. This film about passionate yet obsessive love and self-destruction is based upon the real diary of Adèle Hugo.

Child of Terraces

A coming-of-age comedy/drama set in Tunisia. Twelve-year-old Noura is an impressionable boy who must learn to reconcile two conflicting worlds - the loving world of Moslem women and the vastly different, harsher world of men - while also dealing with his own budding sexuality.

Autopsy-French Movie with English Subtitle

Eric Mercadier, 45, is a police Lt. at Lyon's SRPJ. He's been married to Anne for more than 20 years. But everything will change when he meets Dr. Emmanuel Rivière. Here "autopsy" (which is the real French name of the movie) doesn't really refer to the post mortem examination (it does since the Dr. Rivière is a coroner) but can be divided in two : "auto" and "psy" which translated in English would mean "self psychology". If it can help understand the end of the movie.

I enjoyed this movie but not the Romeo and Juliet type of ending( tragic). Why? Here is one comment from the reader of the tragic ending.

"I was also shocked senseless by the ending of the movie. Perhaps they killed themselves because the love they had could never be the same again. So they fixed it in one last final moment: death. Sex and violence are often linked in these kind of movies. Love can be a violent (intense) change of awareness. The passion of trying to fulfill it physically can also be violent. He needed more time in the hotel, the next day while fixing the tire their meeting was violent. He was dead and in a rut with his work: he came alive.

Young, beautiful and intelligent, Trevor Holden (Brent Gorsky) is in a stalemate. Entangled in an unhealthy relationship with Darrell (Christopher Wyllie), a self-destructive heroin addict, and trapped at a low-paying job, Trevor finds scant comfort in Los Angeles' vapid party scene, where conversation rarely rises above inquiries like "So, are you an actor?" Worse still, he and his two best friends - roommate Andie (Melissa Searing) and singer Jake (Jay Brannan) - are being pulled apart by boredom and discontent. At the hospital for his boyfriend's latest overdose, Trevor finds a potential new beginning in Ephram (Eli Kranski), a medical intern with ambition, a warm demeanor and strikingly good looks. After they spend a romantic evening together, Trevor seems poised to make some changes. He begins by ending his relationship with Darrell and then strives to reconnect with Andie and Jake. But what should be a joyous event - a party celebrating a negative HIV test - results in Andie secretly discovering she is HIV positive because of a drunken hookup.

Later on, Trevor gets into a fight with Darrell at the party, which is overheard by the guests and causes a rift between Trevor and Ephram. Trevor is devastated by the tragic death of Darrell after an overdose. Ephram informs Trevor of Darrell's death and seeks to comfort him in the aftermath. After being offered a job in New York City, Ephram confesses his love for Trevor and suggests he abandon his life in Los Angeles and come live with him. Andie, reeling from her frightening revelation, seeks comfort in Trevor and pleads with him to not leave. Trevor is torn between pursuing the love of his life or staying to assist a dear friend in need. Trevor remains committed to bettering his life, but realizes that some people are too precious to abandon.



The best romantic movie from Korea that I have viewed so far. It will make you laugh and cry. The acting was also superb. It will be worth your time, and be prepared with a tissue.

The film stars Jun Ji-hyun as Officer Yeo Kyung-jin, an ambitious young female police officer serving on the Seoul police department. One day while chasing a purse snatcher, she accidentally captures Go Myung-woo (played by Jang Hyuk), a physics teacher at an all-girls school, who was actually trying to catch the thief. Later, Myung-woo discovers the stolen purse, but just as he picks it up, Kyung-jin spots him and tries to arrest him again. Kyung-jin is then given the job of escorting Myung-woo through a dangerous district, only to be distracted when she tries to break up a meeting between Russian Mafia and Korean gangsters. With Myung-woo handcuffed to her, Kyung-jin almost single-handedly brings down the two rival gangs (although she is helped when she accidentally causes the groups to start shooting at each other).

The first half of the film, told from Myung-woo's point of view, details the couple's growing attraction and love for each other, which climaxes with a trip to the countryside where Myung-woo tells Kyung-jin that if he were ever to die, he wanted to come back to earth as the wind. Soon after, he is almost killed in a freak automobile accident, but Kyung-jin saves his life.

The film takes a turn into the fantasy genre in its second half after Myung-woo is accidentally shot and killed by another officer (although the situation is such that Kyung-jin thinks that it was her shot that killed him) as Kyung-jin chases after a criminal. Kyung-jin falls into a suicidal depression over his death and attempts to kill herself several times, almost succeeding when she throws herself off a building, only to be saved when a giant balloon floats under her. Soon after, she experiences visitations from Myung-woo, who appears as the wind, sending her messages and, at one point, he even appears in her dreams in order to give her the will to live after she is nearly shot to death by a criminal.

Ultimately the film follows a similar path set out by the American film Ghost with Myung-woo and Kyung-jin communicating and sharing one final gesture of love before he moves on to the afterlife. Myung-woo said that he will whisper, when she hears him whisper in the wind, she will meet someone with a soul like him. Myung-woo told Kyung-jin that he will always be beside her inside a book with a photo left by Myung-woo in the restaurant before he rushed to meet Kyung-jin who was chasing the insane criminal.

In the first half of the film, Myung-woo told that his only memory of high school was his high school trip. The book and the photo is found and returned to Kyung-jin in the police station. The photo showed that on Myung-woo's trip, Kyung-jin was nearby. This proved Myung-woo's "I'm always beside you" was true to Kyung-jin. Kyung-jin rushed out to locate the finder of the book, ultimately ending up in the train station, where she is saved by Cha Tae-Hyun's character (credited as The Guy). Myung-woo whispered that The Guy is the one with the soul like him. Kyung-jin whispers that "he is always beside her."

The Mudge Boy

The Mudge Boy is a 2003 American film produced by Showtime. It was directed by Michael Burke and based on his 1998 short film Fishbelly White, featured in the compilation Boys Life 5. On January 17, 2003 it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and in 2003 and 2004 it made the rounds at several gay and lesbian and independent film festivals around the United States. The region 1 DVD was released on May 9, 2006.

Duncan Mudge (Emile Hirsch) is a shy, isolated, sexually confused farm boy whose mother has recently died, leaving him under the supervision of a stern, depressed father. Duncan seems somehow to have transferred his love for the deceased mother to his favorite chicken, which he takes everywhere, even to bed. He has developed the odd habit of putting the chicken's head in his mouth -- to calm the animal, he says.

Duncan also likes to dress in his late mother's clothing, much to the distress of his confused father. The small, insular band of conformist teens that comprise adolescent social life in Duncan's world initially ostracize him, then allow him in to their circle only reluctantly, and largely for their own amusement. Duncan is beset with a profound sense of grief while trying to reconcile himself to a world in which he is a sexual alien. His crush on one of the local kids, Perry (Tom Guiry), leads to a violent resolution where Duncan relinquishes that which he loves.

Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is a 2011 British romantic drama film directed by Andrea Arnold and starring Kaya Scodelario as Catherine and James Howson as Heathcliff. The screenplay, written by Andrea Arnold and Olivia Hetreed, is based on Emily Brontë's 1847 novel of the same name. Like most other film adaptations, the novel's second half, about the romance between Catherine Linton and Linton Heathcliff, is omitted.

In the late winter months of 1801, a man named Lockwood rents a manor house called Thrushcross Grange in the isolated moor country of England. Here, he meets his dour landlord, Heathcliff, a wealthy man who lives in the ancient manor of Wuthering Heights, four miles away from the Grange. In this wild, stormy countryside, Lockwood asks his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to tell him the story of Heathcliff and the strange denizens of Wuthering Heights. Nelly consents, and Lockwood writes down his recollections of her tale in his diary; these written recollections form the main part of Wuthering Heights.

Nelly remembers her childhood. As a young girl, she works as a servant at Wuthering Heights for the owner of the manor, Mr. Earnshaw, and his family. One day, Mr. Earnshaw goes to Liverpool and returns home with an orphan boy whom he will raise with his own children. At first, the Earnshaw children—a boy named Hindley and his younger sister Catherine—detest the dark-skinned Heathcliff. But Catherine quickly comes to love him, and the two soon grow inseparable, spending their days playing on the moors. After his wife’s death, Mr. Earnshaw grows to prefer Heathcliff to his own son, and when Hindley continues his cruelty to Heathcliff, Mr. Earnshaw sends Hindley away to college, keeping Heathcliff nearby.

Three years later, Mr. Earnshaw dies, and Hindley inherits Wuthering Heights. He returns with a wife, Frances, and immediately seeks revenge on Heathcliff. Once an orphan, later a pampered and favored son, Heathcliff now finds himself treated as a common laborer, forced to work in the fields. Heathcliff continues his close relationship with Catherine, however. One night they wander to Thrushcross Grange, hoping to tease Edgar and Isabella Linton, the cowardly, snobbish children who live there. Catherine is bitten by a dog and is forced to stay at the Grange to recuperate for five weeks, during which time Mrs. Linton works to make her a proper young lady. By the time Catherine returns, she has become infatuated with Edgar, and her relationship with Heathcliff grows more complicated.

When Frances dies after giving birth to a baby boy named Hareton, Hindley descends into the depths of alcoholism, and behaves even more cruelly and abusively toward Heathcliff. Eventually, Catherine’s desire for social advancement prompts her to become engaged to Edgar Linton, despite her overpowering love for Heathcliff. Heathcliff runs away from Wuthering Heights, staying away for three years, and returning shortly after Catherine and Edgar’s marriage.

When Heathcliff returns, he immediately sets about seeking revenge on all who have wronged him. Having come into a vast and mysterious wealth, he deviously lends money to the drunken Hindley, knowing that Hindley will increase his debts and fall into deeper despondency. When Hindley dies, Heathcliff inherits the manor. He also places himself in line to inherit Thrushcross Grange by marrying Isabella Linton, whom he treats very cruelly. Catherine becomes ill, gives birth to a daughter, and dies. Heathcliff begs her spirit to remain on Earth—she may take whatever form she will, she may haunt him, drive him mad—just as long as she does not leave him alone. Shortly thereafter, Isabella flees to London and gives birth to Heathcliff’s son, named Linton after her family. She keeps the boy with her there.

Thirteen years pass, during which Nelly Dean serves as Catherine’s daughter’s nursemaid at Thrushcross Grange. Young Catherine is beautiful and headstrong like her mother, but her temperament is modified by her father’s gentler influence. Young Catherine grows up at the Grange with no knowledge of Wuthering Heights; one day, however, wandering through the moors, she discovers the manor, meets Hareton, and plays together with him. Soon afterwards, Isabella dies, and Linton comes to live with Heathcliff. Heathcliff treats his sickly, whining son even more cruelly than he treated the boy’s mother.

Three years later, Catherine meets Heathcliff on the moors, and makes a visit to Wuthering Heights to meet Linton. She and Linton begin a secret romance conducted entirely through letters. When Nelly destroys Catherine’s collection of letters, the girl begins sneaking out at night to spend time with her frail young lover, who asks her to come back and nurse him back to health. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Linton is pursuing Catherine only because Heathcliff is forcing him to; Heathcliff hopes that if Catherine marries Linton, his legal claim upon Thrushcross Grange—and his revenge upon Edgar Linton—will be complete. One day, as Edgar Linton grows ill and nears death, Heathcliff lures Nelly and Catherine back to Wuthering Heights, and holds them prisoner until Catherine marries Linton. Soon after the marriage, Edgar dies, and his death is quickly followed by the death of the sickly Linton. Heathcliff now controls both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. He forces Catherine to live at Wuthering Heights and act as a common servant, while he rents Thrushcross Grange to Lockwood.

Nelly’s story ends as she reaches the present. Lockwood, appalled, ends his tenancy at Thrushcross Grange and returns to London. However, six months later, he pays a visit to Nelly, and learns of further developments in the story. Although Catherine originally mocked Hareton’s ignorance and illiteracy (in an act of retribution, Heathcliff ended Hareton’s education after Hindley died), Catherine grows to love Hareton as they live together at Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff becomes more and more obsessed with the memory of the elder Catherine, to the extent that he begins speaking to her ghost. Everything he sees reminds him of her. Shortly after a night spent walking on the moors, Heathcliff dies. Hareton and young Catherine inherit Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, and they plan to be married on the next New Year’s Day. After hearing the end of the story, Lockwood goes to visit the graves of Catherine and Heathcliff.

EMMA-Jane Austin-Part 1 to 4

Part 1 part 2 At the end of part 2, clicked for part 3 and 4. Enjoy!

The film describes a year in the life of Emma Woodhouse, a congenial but naïve young woman who thinks of herself as a romantic matchmaker in her small community in early-19th-century England. When her governess, Miss Taylor, gets married and goes to live with her new husband, Mr Weston, Emma proudly takes credit for having brought the couple together. Her father and their old family friend George Knightley dispute her claim and disapprove of her trying to make more matches, but she ignores their warnings and sets her mind on setting up Mr Elton, the minister who performed the Westons's marriage ceremony, with Harriet Smith, an unsophisticated young woman just entering society.

As a close friendship develops between Emma and Harriet, it becomes clear that Harriet is being courted by Robert Martin, a farmer who has known Harriet since she was a girl. When Mr Martin proposes to Harriet, she is inclined to accept, but she has come to rely heavily on Emma's advice, and Emma persuades her to reject the proposal. Meanwhile, Mr Elton has been expressing a desire for Emma by taking an interest in a picture she drew of Harriet and by giving her a riddle for a book of riddles being compiled by Harriet. Emma misinterprets this as interest in Harriet, but when Mr Elton and Emma are alone, he fervently declares his love for Emma herself, and she finally realizes her mistake. She rejects his pleas, and he later marries another woman, who turns out to be a vain socialite who competes with Emma for status in the community.

Over the next few months, various gatherings show who loves whom among Emma's friends:

Emma is briefly attracted to a charming, gallant young man named Frank Churchill, Mr Weston's son who comes to visit from London, but Emma soon decides to set him up with Harriet. Frank Churchill is revealed to have a secret engagement with a shy, pretty woman named Jane Fairfax. Harriet has no interest in Frank, preferring Mr Knightley, who was the only man who would dance with her at a party. Mr Knightley danced with Harriet only out of politeness, and is starting to fall in love with Emma.

The conclusion of the story begins when Emma ridicules a poor woman named Miss Bates during a picnic, after which Mr. Knightley angrily scolds Emma and leaves town for a while. She finds herself thinking about him while he's away, but doesn't realise she loves him until Harriet expresses interest in him. When Mr Knightley returns, he and Emma cross paths in a meadow and have a conversation that begins awkwardly but ends with him asking her to marry him and her gladly accepting. The news of their engagement upsets Harriet, who avoids Emma for a while, but returns a few weeks later, engaged to Mr Martin. The film ends with Emma and Mr Knightley's wedding.

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

When Mr. Dashwood dies, his estate, Norland Park, passes directly to his only son John, the child of his first wife. His second wife, Mrs. Dashwood, and their daughters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, are left only a small income. On his deathbed, Mr. Dashwood extracts a promise from his son, that he will take care of his half-sisters; however, John's selfish and greedy wife, Fanny, soon persuades him to renege. John and Fanny immediately take up their place as the new owners of Norland, while the Dashwood women are reduced to the position of unwelcome guests. Mrs. Dashwood begins looking for somewhere else to live.

In the meantime, Fanny's brother, Edward Ferrars, a pleasant, unassuming, intelligent but reserved young man, visits Norland and soon forms an attachment with Elinor. Fanny disapproves the match and offends Mrs. Dashwood with the implication that Elinor is motivated by money rather than love. Mrs. Dashwood indignantly speeds her search for a new home.

Mrs. Dashwood moves her family to Barton Cottage in Devonshire, near the home of her cousin, Sir John Middleton. Their new home lacks many of the conveniences that they have been used to, however they are warmly received by Sir John, and welcomed into the local society, meeting his wife, Lady Middleton, his mother-in-law, Mrs. Jennings and his friend, the grave, quiet and gentlemanly Colonel Brandon. It soon becomes apparent that Colonel Brandon is attracted to Marianne, and Mrs. Jennings teases them about it. Marianne is not pleased as she considers Colonel Brandon, at thirty-five, to be an old bachelor incapable of falling in love, or inspiring love in anyone else.

Marianne, out for a walk, gets caught in the rain, slips and sprains her ankle. The dashing, handsome John Willoughby sees the accident and assists her. Marianne quickly comes to admire his good looks and outspoken views on poetry, music, art and love. Mr. Willoughby's attentions are so overt that Elinor and Mrs. Dashwood begin to suspect that the couple are secretly engaged. Elinor cautions Marianne against her unguarded conduct, but Marianne refuses to check her emotions, believing this to be a falsehood. Unexpectedly one day, Mr. Willoughby informs the Dashwoods that his aunt is sending him to London on business, indefinitely. Marianne is distraught and abandons herself to her sorrow.

Edward Ferrars then pays a short visit to Barton Cottage but seems unhappy and out of sorts. Elinor fears that he no longer has feelings for her, but feels compelled, by a sense of duty, to protect her family from knowing her heartache. Soon after Edward departs, Anne and Lucy Steele, the vulgar and uneducated cousins of Lady Middleton, come to stay at Barton Park. Lucy informs Elinor of her secret four year engagement to Edward Ferrars, displaying proofs of her veracity. Elinor comes to understand the inconsistencies of Edward's behaviour to her and acquits him of blame. She is charitable enough to pity Edward for being held to a loveless engagement by his gentlemanly honour.

As winter approaches, Elinor and Marianne accompany Mrs. Jennings' to London. Upon arriving, Marianne writes a series of letters to Mr. Willoughby which go unanswered. When they finally meet, Mr. Willoughby greets Marianne reluctantly and coldly, to her extreme distress. Soon Marianne receives a curt letter enclosing their former correspondence and love tokens, including a lock of her hair and informing her of his engagement to a young lady of large fortune. Marianne is devastated, and admits to Elinor that she and Willoughby were never engaged, but she loved him and he led her to believe he loved her. In sympathy for Marianne, and to illuminate his character, Colonel Brandon reveals to Elinor that Mr. Willoughby had seduced Brandon's fifteen-year-old ward, and abandoned her when she became pregnant.

In the meantime, the Steele sisters have come to London as guests of John and Fanny Dashwood. Lucy sees her invitation to the Dashwoods' as a personal compliment, rather than what it is, a slight to Elinor. In the false confidence of their popularity, Anne Steele betrays Lucy's secret. As a result the Misses Steele are turned out of the house, and Edward is entreated to break the engagement on pain of disinheritance. Edward, honourably, refuses to comply and is immediately disinherited in favour of his brother, gaining widespread respect for his gentlemanly conduct, and sympathy from Elinor and Marianne who understand how much he has sacrificed.

In her misery over Mr. Willoughby's marriage, Marianne neglects her health and becomes dangerously ill. Traumatised by rumours of her impending death, Mr. Willoughby arrives drunkenly to repent and reveals to Elinor that his love for Marianne was genuine. Threatened with disinheritance because of his immoral behaviour, he felt he must marry for money rather than love, but he elicits Elinor's pity because his choice has made him unhappy.

When Marianne is recovered, Elinor tells her of Mr. Willoughby's visit. Marianne comes to assess what has passed with sense rather than emotion, and sees that she could never have been happy with Mr Willoughby's immoral and expensive nature. She comes to value Elinor's conduct in a similar situation and resolves to model herself after Elinor's courage and good sense.

Upon learning that Lucy has married Mr. Ferrars, Elinor is grieved, until Edward himself arrives to reveal that Lucy has jilted him in favour of his wealthy brother, Robert Ferrars. Edward and Elinor are soon married and in a very few years Marianne marries Colonel Brandon.

PERSUASION- JANE AUSTIN

A movie worth your time if you love Jane Austin novels More than eight years before the novel opens, Anne Elliot, then a lovely, thoughtful, warm-hearted 19 year old, accepts a proposal of marriage from the handsome young naval officer Frederick Wentworth. He is clever, confident, and ambitious, but poor and with no particular family connections to recommend him. Sir Walter, Anne's fatuous, snobbish father and her equally self-involved older sister Elizabeth are dissatisfied with her choice, maintaining that he is no match for an Elliot of Kellynch Hall, the family estate. Her older friend and mentor, Lady Russell, acting in place of Anne's late mother, persuades her to break the engagement.

Now 27 and still unmarried, Anne re-encounters her former love when his sister and brother-in-law, the Crofts, take out a lease on Kellynch. Wentworth is now a captain and wealthy from maritime victories in the Napoleonic wars. However, he has not forgiven Anne for rejecting him. While publicly declaring that he is ready to marry any suitable young woman who catches his fancy, he privately resolves that he is ready to become attached to any appealing young woman except for Anne Elliot.

The self-interested machinations of Anne's father, her older sister Elizabeth, Elizabeth's widowed friend Mrs. Clay, and William Elliot (Anne's cousin and her father's heir) constitute important subplots.

Gospel of Deceit

Is there anything better than picking up a handsome stranger at a church picnic? No, not a handsome stranger that goes to your church, just some dude who happens to be watching you at the park.

If you think this sounds like a good idea, make sure to check out "Gospel of Deceit," a Lifetime gem from 2006. Within the first 15 minutes of the movie, a successful preacher and his wife have met a leather- and jean-jacketed young man, played softball with him, invited him to dinner, hired him on as their "handyman," and given him the keys to their church so he can sleep in the basement. What could go wrong? The Handsome Drifter

EVERYTHING, of course. Emily, the preacher's wife, goes to bed wearing a tight silk nightie, so it won't surprise you to find that she's soon having sexy dreams about the new stranger (who's almost a spitting image of Mac from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, so I'm just going to call him Mac from now on). And who could blame her? Mac is always doing manly things like fixing her car, and even though none of the trees have leaves and you can see the actors' breath, he takes off his tight black t-shirt to wipe the imaginary sweat from his 6-pack abs.

Even though Ted, Emily's husband, is a preacher, he's a total asshole (like just about all LMN husbands). Emily is trying to help him with his new TV career, but he hates her meddling into his business matters. While Emily gets belittled by her husband, Mac continues to saunter around in jeans and a solid color t-shirt, and to make her even her hornier, her quilting circle keeps gossiping about him. So Emily goes to the church in the middle of the nigh--yes, the one Mac lives in--to pray that she'll stop having dreams about get dry-humped in her nightie on the living room floor.

Unfortunately, Mac and a sexy saxophone soundtrack are there waiting for her. When he throatily asks her why she prays, she says it makes her feel love, and that it's more fulfilling than other kinds of love she's felt. "Maybe it's meant to fulfill your soul," Mac says, getting closer, "and leave the other kid of fulfilling to your husband...or lover." Emily kisses him passionately, and soon they're in his church basement bed, saxophone trilling and his back rippling. The next day, Emily can hardly look her parishioners in the face as she hands out hymnals....

But then that very night she's back on top of Mac, breathing heavily in a completely different nightie. She's gotta quit this! But Mac says he loves her, and that he doesn't find fucking a preacher's wife in the church basement immoral. "People can pick the wrong people to be with!" Mac yells as Emily starts to walk out the door.

But it turns out that the wrong person is Mac. In fact, as soon as Emily leaves, he gets a mysterious call on his cell. "Just relax and hold up your end, I'll get the money!!" he says. Mac has Emily meet him at a bar that only a guy with a leather jacket would know about. Emily hustles past the pool table in horror, but before she can finish complaining about the venue, Mac tells her he needs $50,000. When she refuses, he threatens to blackmail her, then tells her that he's a convict. "Why are you acting this way?" she whimpers. "MAYBE THIS IS THE WAY I AM, DID YOU EVER THINK ABOUT THAT?!" he screams, then winks.

But things are about to get worse--and I don't mean the scene where Emily takes her hands off the wheel of her car while praying and almost gets hit by a truck. I mean the scene which contains one of the most awesome Lifetime movie twists in the history of television: Mac tells Emily that he knows her deep, dark secret--that she once had an incest baby with her father. And...HE IS THAT INCEST BABY!

I was too busy laughing to really see Emily's reaction, other than that she runs away yelling "noooo!!" as we all would. Naturally, she's soon stealing money from the church collection to give to her son/lover, but everyone just assumes Mac stole it, along with the family sedan. Still, Emily goes insane and--why not?--goes out into the front yard completely naked and starts babbling about Adam and Eve.

It turns out that Ted met her in an insane asylum after she gave birth to Incest Baby and tried to commit suicide. She was so pretty, Ted never asked her why she had slit her wrists, so it comes as a shock to him when she admits, naked on the front lawn, that she has an IB and that IB is Mac. Oh, and they're fucking. Ted is disgusted, and leaves her on the lawn to sob.

The next morning Emily wakes up in the hospital. "Why am I here?" she asks. "Well, you're crazy," the nurse does not say. Instead, the only reason she offers is, "Your vitals were a little erratic, but you're OK now." (She doesn't seem to think it's odd that someone who simply had "erratic vitals" wouldn't remember the previous evening.) Oh, and guess what? Emily's pregnant!!

I know what you're thinking. It's what everyone who has ever watched this jewel in Lifetime's "Affairs of the Heart" crown thought at this moment: DOUBLE-INCEST BABY!! But the fact that this baby is most likely a DIB is never mentioned in the film. Too hot for censors, or just a really bad script? Either way, I spent the next 20 minutes yelling, "Isn't ANYBODY going to mention that this woman is carrying a double-incest baby? Get that crazy lady a paternity test and/or abortion immediately!!"

Alas, a woman getting an abortion in a Lifetime movie is even less likely than a low-income woman getting non-biased advice about her ladyparts in a red state (ha!). Emily happily carries around her probably-DIB, except for one more brush with almost-suicide via the last non-safety razor in America. But instead of killing herself, she simply shaves her legs and gets to cleaning Mac's old room. There, she finds a note that indicates that someone had paid him to show up to that fateful picnic where everyone was wearing 5 layers of clothing in an attempt to not show how freezing it was outside.

When Emily confronts Mac, there's yet another twist! He's not her IB after all! He's just some random dude her husband hired to sully her name! Emily seems more smug that greatly, greatly relieved that she didn't have sex with her IB. But she just can't believe her husband knew about her IB and would set her up to have sex with a handsome drifter!

Mac gives her back the money, and she brings it to Ted and tells him that Mac was all, yo, your husband hired me to have hot sex with you and then tell you I was your Incest Baby. Ted denies everything, then says that God told him the baby was his. Problem solved! Except...Ted secretly wants Emily dead! Man, he could have saved a lot of trouble with this murder plan in the first place.

So Ted meets up with Mac at the crowded leather-jacket-only bar (where no one will notice an immaculately dressed preacher), and I'm still a little let down that the baby is definitely not a DI- or even IB, and that no one seems to know where the real IB is. Meanwhile, Emily is finding out from their family doctor that her husband had a vasectomy without telling her two years ago (yes, just like in My Stepson, My Lover). Ruh-roh!

At this point, it's not entirely clear: a) why Mac would give Emily back the bounty she stole for him, then agree to help murder her for only $50,000. (I kept expecting him to exclaim, "$50,000! I can live for a year on that kinda money!!"), or b) why Ted would even hire Mac to kill her in the first place, since the chosen method of killing is poison in her tea. In the movie's penultimate scene, Emily lies depressed in bed, the tea Ted has poisoned on a tray next to her, while Mac sneaks in downstairs....

But instead of someone getting knocked down the stairs, or even some more sex in a nightie, Emily and Mac confront her husband during his first sermon in front of a live television audience. Ted has a congregation that's more hootin' and hollerin' than any Caucasian could hope for, and they gasp appropriately when Emily accuses Ted of murder and when Mac plays them a recording of his conversation with Ted in the leather bar.

Ted, not going down like that, grabs a gun from a nearby state trooper and shoots Mac in the chest. He then holds it up to Emily's head. Perhaps it's the non-DIB in her belly, but Emily stands her guard. She's finally able to disarm Ted with the immortal words, "You were right about one thing, Ted, there's no crashing God's party."

After Ted has put down the gun, everyone crowds around outside the church while Mac receives a Band-Aid for his gunshot wound. Before the cops can take him away (for violating his parole?), he and Emily share an emotional scene. Luckily for him, she's not pissed that he spent their last 10 interactions screaming at her, threatening her, and pretending to be her IB. She just wants to know why he didn't run away! "For you, and our baby." He says. "You taught me something about love and faith...I wish I could be more like you." They make out like illicit lovers who don't use protection--and who are NOT related, thank you very much!--in front of the entire congregation. Then the cops haul him away.

True love, Lifetime style...I just hope there's a sequel!

Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) and Soledad (Lola Dueñas) are sisters who grew up in Alcanfor de las Infantas, a small village in La Mancha, but now both live in Madrid. Their parents died in a tragic fire three years prior to the beginning of the film. The events which occurred on the night of the fire are only gradually revealed, but are central to the plot.

Sole returns to the village for the funeral of her elderly Aunt Paula (Chus Lampreave). Aunt Paula's neighbour Agustina (Blanca Portillo) confesses to Sole that she has heard Paula talking to the ghost of Sole's mother Irene (Carmen Maura). Sole encounters the ghost herself, and when she returns to Madrid, she discovers that the ghost has stowed away in the trunk of her car. Irene has brought luggage, intending to stay with her daughter for a while, and Sole, though frightened, agrees to let her mother stay with her: Sole operates a hair salon in her apartment, and Irene will assist her, posing as a Russian woman to hide her true identity. Sole tries to determine why her mother's ghost has returned to Earth, asking her if she left anything undone in her life. Irene says that she does have issues to resolve, relating to the questions of why Raimunda hates her and why she is afraid to reveal herself to Raimunda.

Meanwhile Raimunda and her daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo) have a different death to cope with. Paula's father Paco (Antonio de la Torre) attempts to rape her, claiming that he is not really her father, and Paula stabs him in self-defense. Raimunda quickly hides the corpse in the deep-freezer of a nearby unused restaurant. The owner of the restaurant building, Emilio (Carlos Blanco), is out of town and entrusted Raimunda with the keys so that she can show it to prospective tenants. When members of a film crew happen upon the restaurant, Raimunda strikes a deal to cater for them, and suddenly finds herself back in the restaurant business.

Raimunda reveals to Paula that Paco was not, in fact, her biological father, and promises to tell her the whole story at a later time. Agustina is diagnosed with cancer and must go to Madrid for medical treatment. Raimunda visits her in the hospital. Agustina asks Raimunda if she has seen her mother's ghost. Agustina hopes that the ghost will be able to tell her about the fate of her own mother, who disappeared three years ago without a trace. Raimunda undertakes the task of disposing of Paco’s remains: she leaves Paula with Sole, rents a van and transports the freezer to a convenient spot by the river Júcar, 180 kilometres away. While staying in Sole's apartment, Paula meets her grandmother's ghost and grows close to her. The next night, Agustina comes to the restaurant to renew her request to Raimunda to ask her mother’s ghost about her own mother's whereabouts. She reveals two startling secrets: that Raimunda's father and Agustina’s mother were having an affair and that Agustina's mother disappeared on the same day that Raimunda’s parents died.

Sole finally confesses to Raimunda that she has seen their mother's ghost and that the ghost is, in fact, watching television in the next room with Paula. Raimunda is confused, angry, and frightened, but Paula urges her to tell her the truth: is she really alive, and not a dead spirit? Irene admits that she did not, in fact, die in the fire, and reveals the whole truth. We learn that the reason for Raimunda and Irene's estrangement is that Raimunda's father sexually abused her, resulting in the birth of Paula; thus Paula is Raimunda’s daughter and also her sister. Raimunda had been angry with her mother for never noticing and ending this abuse. Irene tells Raimunda that she had never understood Raimunda's anger and distance until her Aunt Paula told her about what her husband had done to her daughter, and Irene became furious with herself when she found out.

Irene explains that, due to her husband's abuse of Raimunda, she started the fire that killed him. The ashes that had been presumed to be Irene’s were, in fact, the ashes of Agustina's mother, the woman with whom Irene's husband was having an affair. After the fire, Irene wandered for several days in the countryside, until she decided that she wanted to turn herself in. But first, she wanted to say goodbye to her sister Paula, who had lost the ability to look after herself and with whom Irene had been living prior to setting the fire that killed her husband. Paula, who was living in the past due to her senility, welcomed Irene home as if nothing had happened, and Irene stayed, caring for her sister and expecting that the police would come soon to arrest her. Due to the superstitious and closed nature of the community, however, the police never came and the residents, who are accustomed to tales of the dead returning, explained the rare sightings of Irene as "un fantasma", a ghost.

The film ends with the family reunited at Aunt Paula’s house. Irene reveals her presence to Agustina, who believes Irene to be a ghost. Irene pledges to stay in the village and care for Agustina as her cancer worsens, saying to Raimunda that it was the least that she could do after killing Agustina's mother. In the last scene Raimunda visits her mother at Agustina's house. The two embrace and tell one another that they now have time to repair their relationship.

After Part 1, clicked on Part 2 , upper Left hand of page. Repeat the process until Part 7. I can not find parts that is the end of this movie. Emjoy!