Criterion Collection (Firm)

What seems at first to be a straightforward tale of two people getting to know each other over the course of an afternoon gradually reveals itself as something richer, stranger, and trickier: a mind-bending reflection on authenticity, in art as well as in relationships. Both cerebrally and emotionally engaging, reminds us that love itself is an enigma.

Part crime thriller, part family farce, Louis Garrel’s THE INNOCENT shows the dangerous lengths two men go to, and the outlandish lies they tell, for the women they love. Garrel stars as Abel, a museum educator and widower whose mother, Sylvie, marries Michel, one of her drama pupils in the local penitentiary. Once on parole, Michel attempts to start a legitimate life for Sylvie’s sake but soon reverts to his old ways, with the suspicious Abel...

Eleven-year-old Cyril, all coiled anger and furious motion, is living in a group home but refuses to believe he has been rejected by his single father. He spends his days frantically trying to reach the man, over the phone or on his beloved bicycle. It is only the patience and compassion of Samantha, the stranger who agrees to care for him, that offers the boy the chance to move on.

Sandra has just been released from the hospital to find that she no longer has a job. According to management, the only way Sandra can regain her position at the factory is to convince her co-workers to sacrifice their much-needed yearly bonuses. So, over the course of one weekend, Sandra must confront each co-worker individually in order to win a majority of their votes, before time runs out.

From two-time Palme d'Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne comes the story of seventeen-year-old Lokita and twelve-year-old Tori, two immigrants to Belgium from Cameroon and Benin, respectively whose siblinglike bond is the only resource they can depend on in their struggle for survival on the margins of European society. The pair work as performers in a cheap trattoria, dealing drugs on the side, while balancing the demands of an indifferent bureaucracy....

France, 1760. Marianne is commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young woman who has just left the convent. Because she is a reluctant bride-to-be, Marianne arrives under the guise of companionship, observing Héloïse by day and secretly painting her by firelight at night. As the two women orbit one another, intimacy and attraction grow as they share Héloïse first moments of freedom. Héloïse portrait soon becomes a collaborative...

Adele is a high school student who, much to her own surprise, plunges into a thrilling relationship with a female twenty-something art student. This intimate epic sensitively renders the erotic abandon of youth.

A mysterious kidnapping of a corrupt banker by a shadowy crime fighter (American magician Channing Pollock) spins out into a thrillingly complex web of deceptions. Combining stylish sixties modernisms with silent-cinema touches and even a few unexpected sci-fi accents.

Blending unflinching realism with moments of startling, light-filled beauty, the film finds unexpected philosophical richness in the quotidian, small-town existence of Freddy, an aimless young man with epilepsy who, in his childlike simplicity, embodies both great tenderness and terrifying brutality. Leaving the film's cryptic title tantalizingly open to interpretation, Dumont dares viewers to see the divine in a seemingly dead-end world.

Evokes a sense of impending doom, the daily domestic routine of a middle-aged widow. Her chores include making the beds, cooking dinner for her grown son, and turning the occasional trick. Her life is beginning to break down.