Foreign Films on DVD

Ada is a mute woman who travels with her daughter and piano from scotland to bush country new zealand for an arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner. The relationship sours when her husband trades her beloved piano to their neighbor baines. Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 02/01/2005 Starring: Holly Hunter Harvey Keitel Run time: 121 minutes Rating: R Director: Jane Campion

An English teacher has a sordid affair with the detective investigating a series of brutal murders in her neighborhood.<br><b>Genre: Feature Film-Drama<br><b>Rating: UN
Release Date: 13-SEP-2005
Media Type: DVD

Kate Winslet (TITANIC, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY) and Harvey Keitel (U-571, PULP FICTION) add scintillating performances to a seductive, darkly hilarious motion picture that's met with overwhelming critical acclaim! While on a journey of discovery in exotic India, beautiful young Ruth Barroin (Winslet) falls under the influence of a charismatic religious guru. Her desperate parents then hire PJ Waters (Keitel), a macho cult deprogrammer, who confronts Ruth in a remote desert hideaway. But PJ quickly learns that he's met his match in the sexy, intelligent, and iron-willed Ruth! Another memorable motion picture directed by Academy Award(R)-winner Jane Campion -- you'll feel an undeniable comic charge from the sparks that fly as PJ and Ruth face off in an electric battle of the sexes.

With An Angel at My Table, Academy Award®–winning filmmaker Jane Campion brings to the screen the harrowing true story of Janet Frame, New Zealand’s most distinguished author. The film follows Frame along her inspiring journey, from a poverty-stricken childhood to a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia and electroshock therapy to, finally, international literary fame. Beautifully capturing the color and power of the New Zealand landscape, the film earned Campion a sweep of her country’s film awards and the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

Though she followed it with a string of brilliant films, Jane Campion will always be remembered for the shock and delight of her stunning debut feature, Sweetie. Campion focuses her askew, discerning lens on the hazardous relationship between the buttoned-down, superstitious Kay and her rampaging, devil-may-care sister, "Sweetie," and by extension, their entire family’s profoundly rotten roots. A feast of distinctly framed photography and captivating, idiosyncratic characters, Sweetie heralded the emergence of this enormously gifted director as well as the breakthrough of Australian cinema, which would take international film by storm in the Nineties.

Leave it to New Zealand director Jane Campion (The Piano, <i>Angel at My Table) to begin an adaptation of Henry James's great novel (set in the late 1800s) with a group of late-20th-century women from Down Under talking about the importance of a kiss. Like any good film adaptation (and it's a very good one, indeed), this exquisitely framed and mounted Portrait of a Lady is at least as much Campion as it is James. The story of strong-willed, independent-minded Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman, whose skin here is photographed like delicate porcelain) is a tricky one to dramatize, since it's largely about good intentions going awry, roads not taken, misguided decisions made for good reasons. Headstrong American orphan Isabel rejects the proposal of a decent, sensible English suitor, Lord Warburton (Richard E. Grant), because she wants to find her own destiny and identity first. Instead, she is seduced by Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich), an effete collector of art (and women) whom one character describes as a "sterile dilettante." How Isabel's life, and the lives of those who love her, are affected by this fateful (but irreversible?) decision is what the bulk of the film is about. <i>Portrait of a Lady is lovely, heartbreaking, and at times terrifying--as only coming face-to-face with the consequences of one's own life-changing decisions can be. Gorgeously photographed in anamorphic widescreen format. --Jim Emerson

An English teacher has a sordid affair with the detective investigating a series of brutal murders in her neighborhood.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama<br><b>Rating: R<br><b>Release Date: 13-SEP-2005
Media Type: DVD

United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2.4 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), French ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), Italian ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), Spanish ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), Dutch ( Subtitles ), English ( Subtitles ), French ( Subtitles ), Italian ( Subtitles ), Portuguese ( Subtitles ), Spanish ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Documentary, Interactive Menu, Production Notes, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: Jane Campion directed this expressive adaptation of the classic novel by Henry James. Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) is a young American woman who, after the death of her parents, has been sent to England to visit relatives. While her family's tragedy has left her penniless, Isabel's beauty has earned her the attentions of a number of eligible men. When Isabel turns down a proposal of marriage from the wealthy Lord Warburton (Richard E. Grant) because she does not love him, her cousin Ralph (Martin Donovan), who is also smitten with her, arranges for his father to leave her a fortune before succumbing to tuberculosis so that she may live as an independent woman. Isabel takes a tour of Europe, where she meets Madame Merle (Barbara Hershey), a jaded sophisticate and matchmaker who introduces her to Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich), a widowed American artist living abroad. Isabel falls in love with Gilbert and they marry, but his sloth and opportunism soon begin to wear on her, and three years later she is desperate to get out of their relationship. The Portrait of a Lady also stars John Gielgud, Mary-Louise Parker, Christian Bale, and Shelley Winters.
SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Golden Globes, Oscar Academy Awards,

By the Academy Award-winning director of "The Piano," "Two Friends" is Jane Campion's astonishing debut feature--and remains one of her finest films. Louise and Kelly were once inseparable, but they have now grown apart--their friendship has fallen prey to the onslaught of teenage angst and sexuality. "Two Friends" tells the story of their heartbreaking rush toward adulthood with the humor, honesty, and passionate sense of humanity that are the hallmarks of Campion's best work.