Synopsis: In My Life Without Me, Catalan director Isabel Coixet offers the story of a young woman’s diagnosis of terminal cancer. Ann (Polley) spares her family and friends the knowledge of her illness. As she is dying, she experiences a sensual awakening and transforms the lives of those around her. Analysis: My Life Without Me,…
Tag: Synopsis
The Headless Woman – Synopsis & Analysis
Synopsis: While Verónica, a white, provincial middle-class dentist, is driving along a rural road, she hits something or someone, a dog or a dark-skinned child – neither she nor the viewer can be sure – but doesn’t stop to find out what it is. In the days following the accident, she is confused and emotionally…
Mad Max (Film): Synopsis & Analysis
Synopsis: Set in a future time ‘a few years from now’ Mad Max tells the story of a battle between nomad bikers who are running rampant on the roads, and the policemen who are chasing them, trying to curb their anarchic behaviour. Max Rockatansky, played by a youthful Mel Gibson in a role that launched…
The Lodger (Movie): Synopsis & Analysis
Synopsis: Adapted from a successful novel by Marie Belloc, the film reinterprets and offers a solution to the story of infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper and reimagines the seedier parts of London in the nineteenth century.1 After an initial sequence that makes clear that the killer known by his calling card as ‘The Avenger’…
The Ladykillers (1955) – Synopsis & Analysis
Synopsis: The eccentric, old-fashioned home of Mrs Wilberforce, in a quiet London cul-de-sac, provides the unlikely venue for the planning of an audacious train robbery. The sinister figure of Professor Marcus takes a lodging room with the seemingly gentle old lady and holds regular musical soirees there with his friends, forming a string quintet. These…
A Page Of Madness – Synopsis & Analysis
Synopsis: A woman is committed to a mental institution after her baby drowns while her sailor husband is away. He is now a janitor at the asylum. Their adult daughter is about to marry but is worried about her fiancé’s reaction to her mother’s madness. She visits the asylum and is surprised to find her…
Jamon, Jamon – Synopsis & Analysis
Synopsis: José Luis is an executive at his parents’ underwear factory where his girlfriend Silvia works on the shop floor. When Silvia falls pregnant, José Luis promises her that he will marry her, most likely against the wishes of his parents. His mother is determined to break her son’s engagement to a girl from a…
Freaks (1932 Movie): Story Synopsis and Analysis
Synopsis: Circus dwarves Hans and Frieda (Harry and Daisy Earles) are engaged to be married. They work in a tight-knit community of ‘freaks’ that includes a ‘human torso’, a pair of conjoined twins, a ‘half boy’ and assorted other characters. The conniving trapeze artist Cleopatra (Baclanova), a ‘normal’, learns that Hans has an inheritance, and…
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover: Synopsis and Analysis
Synopsis: Albert Spica has commandeered ‘La Hollandais’, an exclusive restaurant where the chef, Richard Borst, creates elaborate cuisine. Albert dines there regularly with his gang of unruly associates and his wife, Georgina; he extorts protection money from Borst. During their visits to the restaurant, Georgina, bored and disgusted by her life with Spica, begins a…
Brief Encounter: Synopsis and Analysis
Synopsis: Laura (Celia Johnson), a housewife, and Alec (Trevor Howard), a doctor, both happily married to other people, happen to fall in love with each other, quite by chance and apparently without calculation, after he removes a piece of grit from her eye. Friendship develops into romance, and the couple meet in town once a…