Les Films des deux mondes

The Catholic Jean-Louis runs into an old friend, the Marxist Vidal, in Clermont-Ferrand around Christmas. Vidal introduces Jean-Louis to the modestly libertine, recently divorced Maud and the three engage in conversation on religion, atheism, love, morality and Blaise Pascal's life and writings on philosophy, faith and mathematics. Jean-Louis ends up spending a night at Maud's. Jean-Louis' Catholic views on marriage, fidelity and obligation make his situation a dilemma, as he has already, at the very beginning of the film, proclaimed his love for a young woman whom, however, he has never yet spoken to.

A rebellious socially-conscious man travels to Nepal to find his dead-beat dad. There, he meets Jane, a beautiful hippie girl hooked on drugs. He's forced to steal artefacts for his father's slimy employer to earn money to help Jane.

There comes a time in every young athlete's life when he or she must weigh the value of training against the isolation from the activities of other youths. In this French movie, Sonia Petrova plays a young ballerina pondering this question. Her teacher is incredibly strict and stern, and the regimen she requires is all-encompassing. She explores the alternatives through the help of a hip young male student of modern dance, with whom she has a brief affair, but decides to continue with her classical training.

After the death of Franco, the nostalgic fascist regime attempts to preserve the 1936's order.

Director François Reichenbach assembled 90 minutes of footage on Japanese rituals and customs, martial arts, evidence of Western commercialism, and the nearly blank faces of urban dwellers who seem to wrap themselves in anonymity as a protection against the crowded masses. Without the benefit of interviews or analyses of what is passing before one's eyes on the screen, the parade of Japanese scenes seems to take place at some distance -- making the viewer a definite outsider with no friendly interpreter to ground his or her perspective.