Bettina Rheims and Serge Bramly's Rose, c'est Paris is both a photographic monograph and a feature-length film. This extraordinary work of art, in two different but interlocking and complementary formats, defies easy categorization. For in this multi-layered opus of poetic symbolism, photographer Bettina Rheims and writer Serge Bramly evoke the City of Light in a completely novel way: this is a Paris of surrealist visions, confused identities, artistic phantoms, unseen manipulation, obsession, fetish, and seething desire.
A very interesting thriller about the coming of age of a troubled young man searching his place in this world. Teenage boy Jonathan (Fabien de Marchi) is having a hard time living with his father and stepmother. On a whim, he steals some money and embarks on a journey of forbidden pleasures. He spends the night in abandoned building and wakes up bound and is held prisoner by Antoine (Johan Libéreau), a young drug dealer wanted by the police. The two boys forge an ambiguous relationship between violence, compassion and fascination. Victim, Jonathan ends up taking a liking to his tormentor.
Il Tempo Dell'Amore (A Time to Love) is an omnibus film of three different love stories that take place in three different eras and locations. The common element is the theme: love causes a lot of pain.
Oulage has it all planned: New Year's eve, at the stroke of midnight, he'll finally kiss Brigitte, the girl he's madly in love with. That'll be the moment, because Brigitte is having a costume party. Oulage has it all planned—except for the fact that Brigitte has also invited a gang of truly parasitical friends: an old girl friend who never leaves Brigitte's side, a manic-depressive police officer, a paranoid psychopath, a cannabis-addict suffering withdrawal pains, a stunning Cuban woman on the prowl for immigration papers, and many others who do everything to ruin Oulage's life.
The central role of Louise is portrayed by Elodie Bouchez, who won a 1998 Cannes "Best Actress" award for The Dreamlife of Angels. When Louise has an encounter with homeless Remi (Roschdy Zem), they have a magnetic attraction, but she is already attached to illiterate shoplifter and pickpocket punk Yaya (Gerald Thomassin). Although allied with Yaya in petty crimes, Louise lives with her widowed father (Lou Castel), a devoted writer of fiction. After a Metro bum (Bruce Myers) tells her of his desire to see his young son, she plucks the kid, Gaby (Antoine de Merle), right out of school, making him the newest rookie recruited into their subway gang. Shoplifting in a department store, the young toughs escape the store's security guards by hiding in the ballet rehearsal rooms of the nearby opera. But does Louise really belong with the subway toughs, or is she just pretending? When she's arrested, Louise is forced to reexamine her lifestyle.
In Marseilles a skilled pizza delivery boy Daniel who drives a scooter finally has his dreams come true. He gets a taxi license. Caught by the police for a huge speed infraction, he will help Emilien, a loser inspector who can't drive, on the track of German bank robbers, so he doesn't lose his license and his dream job.
The Select Hotel is a dead end place for those who do not have enough cash to go somewhere else. The last shelter for those who hang around at night. These shadows walking silently along the streets, selling their poor body heat for a few crumpled banknotes, swallow and digested by their voracious thirst for a cheap high. Enough to forget for a while the distress of a ruined life and to dream of a more rejoicing elsewhere. Nathalie and her brother Tof struggle against this futureless world. Pierre, a shoe-repairer, troubled by Nathalie's grace will take part for a while to the life of these two children of misery.
A Chinese prostitute weds, studies painting, and becomes a renowned artist and professor in Paris.