This odd film is a major representative of an even odder film genre: direct-to-celluloid opera. It was commissioned by the Portuguese master of style, director Manoel de Oliveira from composer João Paes. Musically, it ranges from 19th-century romanticism to popular, modernist and even "post-modernist" styles. In the initially tame story, a host-narrator tells the story of a wedding between the two lovebirds: Viscount d'Aveleda and the beautiful Marguerite. However, what happens in the bridal chamber is incredibly bizarre. The events after that are even stranger, and the wedding guests and family indulge in cannibalism, among other perversions.
A film about two young women, trying to decide how to go on with their lives and loves: Marie just dumped her boyfriend, who's married and can see her just secretly twice a week. At this point Pipa invites her to join her on a visit at her home at the coast of Portugal. Only when they are arrived there, Marie learns that Pipa has come to marry Manuel, and that she too is unsure if she'll be happy with her decision.
Feckless aspiring architect Stéphane leaves his pregnant girlfriend for theater designer Sabine; Sabine in turn vainly attempts to overcome her violent obsession with an actor in her theater company. A game of emotional chutes and ladders ensues.
The journey of an intellectual Creole. Before returning from Lisbon to Luanda, he stops in the Cape Verde islands in search of his ethnic and cultural roots.
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.
The world after the atomic age. An engineer disappears, together with his consortium (Kryo'Corp) and his discovery: a new energy source powered by the fusion of two primary substances. Ulysses, Kryo'Corp's heir, organises an expedition to the only place these substances occur.
Paul has left his wife and children. Now his wife and ex-mistress is on the hunt for him.
Portrait of the last days of the life of Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco.
Four nameless people -- the old man, the woman, the soldier, and the gambler -- journey to a desolate wasteland beyond the limits of an unnamed city.
Vincent, a young Swiss, is upset by his meeting with the city of Lisbon. He will meet two persons: a prostitute of high flight and a great writer fallen and suicidal.
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.
Madrid, Spain. On Monday, December 22, 1947, Charles Vidor's Gilda, starring Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford, premieres. That same week, as every first Friday of the month, Hauma organizes a peculiar card game in an old tavern.
Martine is 25. Since breaking up with François, she has the feeling that the world is caving in on her. Between small jobs and one-night stands, she can't seem to get a fix on herself. In desperation, after a last quarrel with François, she unintentionally causes an accident that leads her to the emergency ward of a psychiatric hospital. During her brief stay, she unexpectedly sparks into life. She takes an interest in two young patients, Pierre and Anne, convinced that she is doing the right thing in supervising their love life...
This European thriller, set in Sri Lanka, attempts to expound upon the philosophical implications of life, death, and memory. JB, an academic famed for his studies of oriental culture and alcoholic who has never recovered from his wife's suicide, returns to Sri Lanka to translate a book written on glass. It is supposed to contain Buddha's discourse upon memory. While he is there, an attractive nurse, Julia asks him to assist a young boy who wants to locate his father who is now living in a Tamil-occupied area. The Tamil terrorists will kill any trespassers. Compounding JB's conflict in deciding to go is that his former home where he lived with his wife is in that area. Unbeknownst to him, the boy is really a Tamil spy.
A blind beggar is robbed of his chest of money. The theft leads to a dramatic situation in the street where he begs every day.
The film tells a story of Mariana, a nurse who leaves Lisbon to accompany an immigrant worker in a comatose sleep on his trip home to Cape Verde. The devoted Portuguese nurse took a journey only to find herself lost in abstract drama.
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.
Oligophrenic Fany (Bohdalová) lives with her aunt who suddenly manages to travel abroad. Fany has to move to her sister (Jirásková). Two very different women, one mentally disabled and the second one intelligent doctor has to live together and learn from each other about tolerance, loneliness, life and why call dogs "Mister".
Philippe is a middle-aged painter, he lives with Annie : they have two kids. Just after they split up, Philippe meets Justine. He starts thinking about love, the relationship between former lovers..
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.