THE HOUSE OF SPIRITS: SYNOPSIS: South America before the second world war. The poor Esteban marries Clara and they get a daughter, Blanca. Esteban works hard and eventually gets money to buy a hacienda and become a local patriarch. He becomes very conservative and is feared by his workers. When Blanca grows up, she falls in love with a young revolutionary, Pedro, who urges the workers to fight for socialism. It is unavoidable that Pedro and Esteban are pitted against each other. Esteban tries to stop the love affair between Pedro and his daughter by all means possible but soon Blanca becomes pregnant and has a daughter. The void between father and daughter seems unbridgeable when Blanca moves in with Pedro.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer: SYNOPSIS: Adapted from Patrick Süskind's clammy, high-toned international best seller, "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw), a skinny, sallow young fellow who grows up in the pungent atmosphere of 18th-century France burdened with a preternaturally sensitive nose. Whereas Mr. Süskind portrayed this condition in ripe, sarcastic prose, the director Tom Tykwer's method is one of stupefying literalism. Exploiting the lush, lurid tones of Frank Griebe's cinematography, he rubs our noses in Grenouille's world by assaulting our eyes with what he smells. Thus the camera lingers on rotting fish, on animal skins at the tannery where Grenouille serves an early apprenticeship, and then on the lissome ladies who become his victims. But the only smell produced by these long, breathy close-ups is a metaphorical one, a foul, stale odor traceable back to the movie itself.
THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY: The seemingly claustrophobic story of a man imprisoned in his paralyzed body becomes a dazzling and expansive movie about love, imagination, and the will to live. After a stroke, Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric, Kings and Queen) can only move his left eye.
