2007. France. Subtitled. 105 mins. (Lustful, Historical, Passionate)

A coven of Jews keeps the dark secret of the past from a son who is haunted by dreams of a brother he never had. Sounds like a good programmer for Jewish film festivals but is actually a study in desire and lust that is so original it has to be true.

“Based on a true story” is carried in the main titles. How could you make this up? At Maxime’s (Patrick Bruel) marriage to Hannah (Ludivine Sangnier) he is introduced to his wife’s brother’s wife, Tania (Cecile de France). Cecile is a Belgian beauty who would stir anyone’s loins, and indeed, Maxime goes through his wedding night watching her ass across the dance floor.

If you want to see where this actress came from and the range of what she can do, watch L’Auberge Espagnole also on MovieWithMe. She’s an actress with a range far beyond mere seduction.

But in A Secret, that is her role and she’s up for it. Maxime and Tania waltz around each other for several years while Maxime and Hannah produce a perfect son who has all the personality of his mother and all the athletic skill of his father. But Hannah catches on to the heat she’s not part of, and, in suicidal despair, delivers herself and her son into the arms of the Nazis who have conquered France.

Meanwhile Tania’s husband is killed in the war. The last barrier is down and the lovers buzz towards each other like moths to a flame. Their passion produced another son. This one has neither the charm of his mother or the physic of his father. Everybody in the little circle of Jews, that includes neighbor Louise clams up about what happened during the war.

Finally the little boy pieces it all together. The story has the feel of grand opera. Indeed, it would be a good subject. And the movie is less satisfying carrying about the little boy learning of his secret brother than watching the pas de deux of the two lovers circling each other, denying then eyeing, then panting and finally arriving at that luscious moment of sex that would be the opera’s second act curtain. Forget the anemic kid, the lovers are movie enough.

2004. Austria. Subtitled. 105 mins. (Lustful, Slice Of Life-ish, Passionate) Three films, all within the same austere apartment complex, all about loneliness and anonymity of modern life. Each film is related to the next, and each focuses on passion and emptiness. The sexual heat of the first story is brilliantly directed and should be watched again and again. In all the stories, love is the driving force behind the emotionally wrought experiences.

2000. Spain. Subtitled. 90 mins. (Actionistic, Lustful, Crime-inal) One of these days I would like to string Najwa Nimri's sex scenes together and see the body of her work along with her body. She's nothing less than remarkable in films like Lovers of the Arctic Circle, Sex and Lucia, and Asfalto. This movie belongs to the period of Spanish productions when hip urban crime dramas emulating American pictures were thought to be the key to international distribution. Alas, producers chasing pots of money usually end up without a pot to piss in. But let's thank movies like Salto al Vacio and Asfalto for discovering Najwa. She's half Basque, half Jordanian. Her name in Arabic means "ecstasy." Wow, how did her father know? (he's the Arab in the family). Asfalto is a drug-seal-gone-wrong kind of movie. Najwa is the girlfriend of one of the guys until she and the other one discover they have extreme heat for each other. So who gets to bed her? She can't decide so invites both of them. Quite a good kinky scene follows. It turned the director on enough to marry her, and got the attention of Julio Medem who cast her in Lovers of the Arctic Circle (MovieWithMe.com) and Sex and Lucia (MovieWithMe.com). She's continued to work in many Spanish films although few have made it to the US. If you yearn for her you can sample her singing in the band Najwajean on iTunes. Her sound is not-so-good euro pop. Too bad she doesn't sing Jordanian-Basque fusion. That could be hot.

2002. France. Subtitled. 122 mins. (Slice Of Life-ish, Lustful, Comedic) Students come from all over Europe to study in Barcelona on a special one-year program like American universities' Junior Year Abroad. Wild times, aching romances, and characters from all over make this euro-pudding funny, insightful, and very relatable.(film also called "The Spanish Apartment" and "Euro Pudding." Two stupid names from the tasteless sales agents.)

1984. United Kingdom. 107 mins. (Lustful, Fantastical) Kathleen Turner is a sports wear designer by day but the notorious and sexually incredible whore, China Blue, by night. All is well until one of her clients figures out the double life and falls for her. Meanwhile a red light district preacher tries to save he soul. Ken Russell never let's logic interfere with passion and this is a perfect movie for him to show his style and Kathleen Turner show body.

2002. Chile. Subtitled. 103 mins. (Growin-upish, Lustful, Political-ish)

A Spanish production by a Chilean novel might not qualify as a Chilean film, but is it Spanish? I'm calling it Chilean here for the setting and sensibility.  Bad trailers that feature nothing but nudity and violence, and mindless title translations into English-are no surprise. But you would think someone would have found a better English language title for this very good movie. In Spanish it is called El Lugar Donde Estuvo el Paraiso. Translation: The Place that Was Paradise.

That’s how it is listed in the IMDb database. What moron decided the English language DVD title should be Dictadura? Couldn’t anyone at Venevision come up with an English word for the title? Luckily, the story is a lot less confusing than the title.

The dictator refers to a Consul stationed somewhere in the Amazonian jungle. His daughter, Ana, who he hasn’t seen in many years, flies in for an unexpected visit and gets a taste of the politics, dirty dealing and bribes that keep her father afloat. Then she meets Julia, her father’s young mistress, and watches them make love.

This show is interrupted by Enrico, a bush pilot who has settled in as a houseguest. He’s terribly sexy, and very dangerous. As Julia warns Ana at breakfast the next morning, “stay away from Enrico, believe me, it is a bad idea.” (We later learn he deals drugs). Ana retorts, “Maybe one man in bed isn’t enough for you.”

The women are almost the same age, allowing the story turn on the conflict between them. Julia, whom the Consul picked up in a chorus line, is a survivor protecting her own turf. “Look Ana, I was raised in misery. I’m not educated like you and I’ve never traveled.” Ana is the protected city girl afraid to eat a piranha for breakfast. The film is her coming of age through seeing her father as he is, not as she imagined.
This could easily be a telenovela. But good casting and the humid lushness of the Amazon make it a woman’s adventure into another world, another life. Too bad it’s lost between two titles. IMDb should change its search to show both.

2001. Spain. Subtitled. 112 mins. (Fantastical, Lustful) Two rival angels, one from heaven, one from hell, are sent to earth to fight for the soul of a boxer. They use their brains, their wits, and above all--maximum sex appeal. Augustin Yanes is never less than really interesting, and this is another of his brainy but sensual movies.

2005. Chile. Subtitled. 85 mins. (Lustful, Romantic, Passionate)

Two strangers meet at a party and spend the night in a cheap motel room, but what happens is anything but cheap. This amazing film never goes flaccid while exploring the deepening relationship between Daniela (Blanca Lewin) and Bruno (Gonzalo Valenzuela).

Movies like this are not new. Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow did it in John and Mary (1969). What is new is Julio Rojas always surprising screenplay that keeps changes topics in an every deepening quest. Two people go from causal sex to true need and understanding. They carry secrets in their wallets that each, in turn, sneaks a look at, but never admits to the other. It is what must be confessed between hotter and hotter sex and frantic pillow fights.
Blanca Lewin comes from a long history of soap operas and television series. Gonzalo Valenzuela comes from telenovelas; the TV serials that are a staple of Latin countries. In a country like Chile, without much movie production, TV is the way to work as an actor. It carries none of the stigma attached to TV roles in the United Sates.

If either of these actors were part of a bigger culture, they would be international stars. Blanca would vie for the Paz Vega roles, and Gonzalo might be a rival of Gael Bernal Garcia. (Gonzalo’s sister Luz Francisca Valenzuela was Miss Chile in the Miss Universe contest in 1996 but she lost to Miss Venezuela).

If you want to see what a director, writer, and two good actors can do with one set, hot sex, nudity, and penetrating character portraits: this is for you. It also makes you wonder why the porn industry never thought of hiring good directors, writers, and actors to elevate their product. If they had, they would have survived the onslaught of online amateurs that killed their biz. It’s all about haste versus taste: or porn versus art.

2003. Italy. Subtitled. 102 mins. (Lustful, Slice Of Life-ish)

Most of us are secret voyeurs when it comes to watching the action in the window across the street, but do we ever think they are watching us just as intensely? A dull marriage is the best reason to take a look at the hunk in the apartment across the way while peeling onions. When Giovanna finally meets him and sees the view from his apartment, she understands his fascination for her too.

Let’s backtrack. Giovanna is played by Giovanna Mezzogiomo, daughter of the famous Italian director Vittorio Mezzogiomo and the actress, Cecilia Sacchi. She’s beautiful, luscious, sexy, and totally not working class. So you’ve got to separate this film into parts to appreciate it. The lustful part about a woman fantasizing about an affair with the neighbor across the courtyard, and his fantasy of her: is imaginative an titillating. The rest is problematic (that’s a nice way of saying not quite believable).
Feeling overwhelmed and stuck in a dull marriage, Giovanna begins refocusing her attention (or repressing her emotions) by caring for the Jewish Holocaust survivor her husband brings home one day. As Giovanna reflects on her life, she turns to the man who lives across from her and whose window faces hers.

Giovanna is married to Flippo, a truck driver on the night shift. She hates her life as an accountant in a chicken killing plant, and she has no passion for her husband. This is even more true after he picks up an old man (Massimo Girotti) wandering in the street one day who claims he can not remember who he is. Later we learn he is a famous pastry chef, and a holocaust survivor who lost his only true love (male) to the Nazis.

Why he keeps up the ruse of not remembering and how it leads into Giovanna trusting him as a substitute for the parent she never had is a mystery the screenwriter has not solved. Mr. Pastry also gives her guidance in her marriage (she is about to have an affair with Lorenzo, the man who lives across from her kitchen window and she is obsessed with watching), and her career (he shows her how to make great pastry and urges her to find herself.)

She makes pastry and plans the affair with Lorenzo. All goes well until she sees the view of her life from HIS window, where he has been obsessed with watching her too. Now she must choose between the lover (who is conveniently about to move away and invites her along) and the life of a chicken plucker accountant. I won’t give away the ending.

Amazingly, you forgive the inconsistencies and conveniences in the plot because Giovanna is so interesting to watch and her story, a woman’s story, seems to resonate so universally.

1987. United Kingdom. 87 mins. (Fantastical, Escapist, Lustful, Scary) Poet Lord Byron turns his estate into a shocking, horror-filled maze of bizarre encounters that inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It all starts with the drugs (Laudenum in those days). Byron encourages his guests to share stories as they explore the dark corners the estate and their own minds.

1999. Korea South. Subtitled. 99 mins. (Lustful, Murderous)

Husband kills wife out of concern for their child. Like many of the reverses that make Korean films so delicious, the concept of wife murder for child welfare is kind of endearing. Or at least it is well justified as the ending in Happy End.

Bora (Do Yeon Chun) is having a torrid affair with a young guy, Il-beam (Jin-mo Ju). He lives in the same super giant apartment complex where she lives with her husband Ki Min (Min-sik Choi) and their baby. It’s tough enough to take the train to work with everyone she knows, but sneaking into her neighbor’s apartment for nightly trysts (she says she is working late) gives the affair a flash of daring.

And it is quite an affair. The sex is hot and hotter, and she can never get enough. Her lover wants her so much he gives her a key to his apartment. But Bora wants nothing of him but his penis, it seems. She tosses the key in her purse and forgets it. When he takes the big step of buying her a toothbrush of her own: she says enough. Any sign of permanency freaks her out. Her real life is down the hall and up the elevator with her husband and baby. She’s carefully to take only pictures, leave only footprints.

What she forgets is the Polaroid pictures Il-beam has been snapping of them in just about every position. Her husband finds the key, finds the apartment, finds the pictures.

Husband Ki Min carefully plots his wife’s murder down to the smallest detail of human hair. This crime of passion is accompanied by a sound track swelling with classical music using the sucking sound of steal penetrating flesh as a counter rhythm. (Min-sik Choi is the same actor who channels blood so well in Old Boy and Lady Vengeance (MovieWIthMe).What is so delicious about Korean cinema is its perfect mixture of art and gore. We’re led down a path festooned with rich characters and images only to find ourselves at the doorstep of depravity. How much more wonderful could movies be than this?

2007. United States. 84 mins. (Lustful, Suspenseful) A man and woman battle it out in her apartment. He's a journalist, she's a star. At first they hate each other. Later they are not sure. The game keeps changing as resentment, hate, lust, respect, anger and desire are all thrown into the mix. This is a unique two-character piece that is at once as confining and also expansive as earlier experiments like Hitchcock's "Rope."

1988. United Kingdom. 93 mins. (Scary, Lustful, Fantastical) A scottish curse let loose. A bored housewife who inadvertently releases it and allows the white worm to begin creating terribly lustful and bloodful orgies about the house. Her husband, a young innocent named played by the young Hugh Grant never quite understands it all until he too is swept up in the sensual circus. Wow.

2001. Israel. Subtitled. 102 mins. (Comedic, Lustful)

Two enormously fat Georgian (Soviet) Jews invade the love nest of their son in Tel Aviv and demand he leave his lover for is wife. He’s not married yet, but they have plans and love shouldn’t get in the way. We normally think of Israelis as shrewd men and tough women. But in an immigrant nation, there’s no such thing as normal.

It’s a melting pot where nothing melts. There’s an old joke about a Jew marooned alone on a deserted island who builds two synagogues. When he is rescued they ask why two? He says, “one to worship in and the other one I wouldn’t set foot in.”

Zaza is 31. He’s in love with a 34 year-old divorcee with a young daughter. He is blissfully happy, especially in the very sensual bedroom scenes with Judith (Ronit Elkabetz). She’s pretty amazing, in bed and out, and has gone on to many more movies, mostly in France. But in Late Marriage she’s content to take of her clothes and jump on Zaza, making him the happiest Georgian in town.

But she’s divorced, and she’s not of his Georgian tribe. When his parents storm her apartment she’s sure he’ll chose love over tradition. Ha! You can accuse director Dover Kosashvili of short-handing a lot in the parents’ characters, but he precisely asks the right questions of conviction versus convenience. Zaza tries to slink back, but you don’t slink with Judith.

Judith’s had enough of him, and Ronit, seems to have had enough of Israel. She moved to France and continued her career with Origine Controlee, an intriguing little movie that was brought to American as Made in France. (This takes the all-time prize as the worse title translation ever).

Meanwhile at home, the Israelis are still battling one another to prove ethnic and moral superiority. Tradition battles commerce, religion battles secularity. It makes one of the most fertile cultures for filmmaking even if it is the worst for peace and politics. I’m reminded of the old Kingston Trio song, “They’re Rioting in Africa,” that goes:

“The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles. The Italians hate Yugoslavs, the South African’s hate the Dutch. And I don’t like anybody very much.”

2003. Israel. Subtitled. 110 mins. (Growin-upish, Lustful, Comedic)

Young Nadav lusts after his sexy Aunt Nina by peeping in her window and writing lustful stories in his diary about her. When Nina’s husband dies in a bomb incident while in the Army reserves, Nadav’s mother sends him temporarily to live with Aunt Nina so she won’t be alone. From the spare room he gets to observe all the twists and tragedies of her love life.

Soon Annon installs himself as her perfect lover. Actually he was part of the Army detail who came to inform her of her husband’s death (in a great bit of humor, they soldiers on the detail get the wrong apartment and inform the wrong widow. She faints, but manages to scream out “You want Entrance B” as she recovers. (the unit next door-see the clip).

Annon is everything Nina wants. He is sensitive to the point of crying, he is poetic, and he is dedicated. He also has a girl friend. What make Nina’s Tragedies so watchable are the little twists between tragedy and humor. Like the naked man Nina sees in the street who resembles her husband. He turns out to be the boyfriend of a Russian woman who is a buddy of Nadav’s peeping Tom accomplice. So it goes.

The film would not have worked if not for Shmil Ben Ari (Annon), who seduces not by sweeping Nina off her feet, but by crying over her tragedies. What an original twist on a guy trying to prove he is sensitive. Meanwhile Nadav is coming of age in this cozy world of lust and irony.

Some movies work so much better on the small screen, and I think this is one of them. In a theater Annon’s crying would be unsettling. We would think, “Get over it.” On an intimate screen his over-the-top emotions are just perfect.

2008. Austria. Subtitled. 121 mins. (Passionate, Romantic, Lustful)

Alex (Johannes Krisch) changes sheets in a brothel where he falls in love with a hooker named Tamara and plots their escape from the pimp who owns her. He robs a bank to get enough money but Tamara is shot and killed by a cop during the getaway. If someone pitched this idea you’d suggest jumping off a bridge just to end depression.

That is, until you understood the shooting is only a preamble to the real story. The man who killed the prostitute, Robert (Andreas Lust), is a cop. His wife Susanne (Ursula Strauss), is trying to get pregnant but knows her problem is his impotence. Meanwhile she’s taking care of an old farmer who is the grandfather of bank robber Alex. And Alex, mourning his girl friend Tamara’s (Irina Potapenko’s) death and needing a place to escape, comes to the farm. Are you with me?

What starts out as ordinary tale (except for Irina Potapenko’s body, which nobody can describe as ordinary) becomes a tale of revenge (revanche in French) that skims over the predictable and always finds an original direction.

Robert (Andreas Lust) is the cop overcome with guilt at what he has done, even through it was an honest mistake in the line of duty. His wife is so faithful to him she is unfaithful when she meets Alex chopping wood at the farm because sees him as the sperm stud who can be the answer to her pregnancy problem.

It may all sound complicated and a bit contrived, but the result is captivating because of the players. Much in the style of another Austrian, Michael Haneke (Funny Games, The Piano Teacher, The White Ribbon), Gotz Spielmann is wonderful at implied relationships and penetrating character studies. See his masterful film of three urban character studies, Antares, also on MovieWithMe. See especially part one of that movie which is one of the most erotic chapters to come out of staid old Austria.

2002. Tunisia. Subtitled. 100 mins. (Lustful, Passionate) After her husband’s death, a woman who has always been a housewife is drawn to the sensuality of belly dancing in a local club, where she meets and falls in love with her daughter’s fiancee.

2001. Spain. Subtitled. 128 mins. (Lustful, Fantastical, Passionate)

2005. France. Subtitled. 108 mins. (Passionate, Lustful, Crime-inal, Tearful)

2000. Korea South. Subtitled. 90 mins. (Lustful) The director Kim Ki-duk (everyone's name in Korea is last name first, so really Ki-duk Kim) is never less than an amazing visual story teller. This simple story of the girl who runs the bait shop at the edge of a remote lake, servicing fishermen in floating cabins with fishing supplies and her own body, and her love affair with an man on the run--sounds easy to watch. But be warned! Kim ki-duk films are never easy, and you are not human if you don't wince and turn your eyes away from moments in this one.

2009. United States. 112 mins. (Political-ish, Lustful, Tearful, Historical)

The true historians of war are gravediggers. By the time their battle begins the others have all ended. The smoke has cleared. All that is left is a lot of questions without answers. Shakespeare employed a couple of these shovelers in Hamlet.

Modern times demand a more psychological approach. The Messenger is about Will Montgomery (Ben Foster), just retuned from Iraq and assigned to be an army Casualty Notification Officer. He works in a two-man team with hard ass Capt. Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson). Their job is to drive around notifying dead soldier’s wives and parents that their lovers and sons have bought the big one.

Owen Moverman directs from his own script; and the film has a writerly feel. It’s not so much the drama of war’s nihilism, like Hurt Locker, as it is a mindful reflection.

If you ever want a downer evening try double billing The Messenger with Gardens of Stone. The latter is Francis Coppola’s 1987 film about men assigned to the ceremonial burial details at Arlington Nation Cemetery (during the Viet Nam War).

The first movie notifies the next of kin, the second movie blows the trumpet and folds the flag as the coffins slide into the ground. Both are very good films. Together they offer a requiem for America’s recent war adventures.

We can hope The Messenger is not damage Moverman’s career the way Gardens of Stone was for Coppola’s. In Coppola’s case it was not the movie, it was the making of the movie. During the filming, Francis’s son Gio (Gian Carlo) was killed in a gruesome accident. The speeding motorboat in which he was a passenger passed under a towline and he was beheaded.

Coppola retreated into his Silverfish video command trailer and never came out. He directed the rest of the picture in seclusion. Each day word came from the unseen director for set ups and shots of military burials.

An experience like that is ample reason to lose your love of making films. Gardens of Stone was (in my opinion) the last great chancy subject for Coppola. Afterward he settled into another Godfather sequel and a lot of executive producer credits. The few films he has actually directed since are minor works that smell of easy money.

Owen Moverman is luckier. Or is he? There was no personal tragedy we know of while making his death trip film. But the writer-director’s worldview is a tad mawkish. His Casualty Notification Officers must offer emotional justification as they act out the futility of war. To make them emotionally interesting, Will has to have a love affair with a soldier’s widow, Jena (Samantha Morton).

Coppola was felled by a bizarre personal tragedy. Moverman seems to hunt bizarre emotional situations on screen.

Look at his past writing credits like Jesus’ Son, Face, Married Life, and The Big Blow you feel he’s a kinky dude. Where he goes next is going to be interesting. Where he has been with The Messenger is certainly worth experiencing as long as you’re not feeling suicidal.

2002. Brazil. Subtitled. 94 mins. (Escapist, Lustful, Comedic) A magical pair of shoes—not because of what they do but what secret the hold. The story weaves from Rio to Havana while Dolores can’t stop dancing.

1969. United Kingdom. 131 mins. (Passionate, Romantic, Lustful) Two men, and two women embark on a foursome holiday in the Swiss Alps back in the 1920s. Together they explore the nature of love and passion, each relating to the other, or others, in ways they never dreamed possible in the starched society of the English Midlands. Novelist DH Lawrence's sensual twining is forcefully brought to life in the classic film that never dates itself.

2001. Mexico. Subtitled. 105 mins. (Growin-upish, Lustful, Political-ish)