ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[Fran]

Israel

AKA Sweet Mud (literally "Crazy Mud")



From Film.com:

On a kibbutz in southern Israel in the 1970's, Dvir Avni realizes that his mother is mentally ill.  In this closed community, bound by rigid rules, Dvir must navigate between the kibbutz motto of equality and the stinging reality that his mother has, in effect, been abandoned by the community.

[oilgun]

For this next round, let's do

Foreign Films

(by foreign, I mean non-US)

Let's see how many different countries we can get....

Unplayed movies, as usual. Wildcard X is in effect. I'll be updating the archive shortly. Have fun!

Leslie
GameMistress

So English language films are eligible then?

[MaineWriter]

So English language films are eligible then?

Yes!

[oilgun]

Austria

Synopsis
One of the most inscrutable, alarming, frustrating, and fascinating contemporary film directors, Michael Haneke (THE PIANO TEACHER, CACHE) has created a name for himself by examining disturbing issues (sadism, violence, suicide, racism, voyeurism, alienation, nihilism, and misguided faith) with a cold cerebral eye. BENNY'S VIDEO opens with disturbing images of a pig being slaughtered; it is one of the many images obsessively viewed and reviewed by Benny, the 14-year old son of a wealthy Viennese family. Detached and ignored, Benny seems only able to experience life through his video camera. When he kills a young girl on tape, his parents go about covering up the murder, and Haneke draws everyone--Benny, his parents, and the viewers themselves--into a web of complicity and postmodern dysfunction. Though his films are difficult to watch and invariably leave the viewer with more questions than answers, Haneke's unswerving films are some of the most compelling examples of the new European cinema.

[MaineWriter]

Aruba

[belbbmfan]

Belgium! 

Imdb:
The lives of a group of friends get disturbed when one of them (Zwarte Kelly) comes back after having lived in New York for some years. Her arrival leads to problems for Frederic when his girlfriend, who's away on a volleyball tournament, thinks he's having an affair with her. While Nick turns out the only one of the group who hasn't really changed with advancing years, some unfinished business between Zwarte Kelly and Kurt make already troubled Kurt decide he has had it and he takes off. Frederic and Nick are going after him.

[Fran]

Mexico



From IMDb:

This film is about a woman who was a child refugee from the Spanish Civil War and is now living as an adult in Mexico City.  She tries to remember the traumatic events of her childhood.

[oilgun]

Switzerland

French Title:  F. est un salaud
Description :
Clean cut 16 year old Beni is a Zurich high school student just itching for an alternative life. That opportunity comes when he goes to a rock concert where he falls madly in love with Fogi, the dangerously attractive lead singer of The Minks. With looks suggesting a thuggish Keanu Reeves, the 26 year old Fogi surprisingly take to the cute, but coltish youth. He hires him as a roadie and the two begin a wild sexual attraction that hardens into love and devotion for Beni but wears off for the soon bored Fogi. Beni, willing victim for this first love, is emotionally eaten alive by his slavish devotion, lust and eventual servitude to the increasingly indifferent Fogi. The two stay together however but soon sink into alienation, drug addiction, and self destruction. The teen must soon decide to venture into the dark inevitably with his love or jump off.

[MaineWriter]

UK/Luxembourg

[Fran]

China

AKA Xingfu shiguang



From Amazon.com:

A beautifully heart-wrenching movie. Zhao, a middle-aged laid-off factory worker, longs for a wife; in the hopes of marrying a pushy divorcée, he agrees to pay for an expensive wedding. To raise money, he turns a derelict bus into a place for couples to rendezvous, and brags to his fiancee about how he manages the Happy Times Hotel. When the divorcée insists that Zhao give Ying, her blind stepdaughter, a job at the hotel as a masseuse, he convinces his friends to help him concoct a fake massage parlor where the girl can work. Happy Times begins as a delightful light comedy, but as the relationship between Zhao and Ying grows, this deceptively simple movie flows effortlessly back and forth from sweetness to sorrow, culminating in a devastatingly moving ending.