Persona begins with images of camera equipment and projectors lighting up and projecting dozens of brief cinematic glimpses, including a crucifixion, an erect penis, a tarantula spider, clips from a comedic silent-film reel first seen in Bergman's Prison (depicting a man trapped in a room, being chased by Death and Satan), and the slaughter of a lamb. The last, and longest, glimpse features a boy who wakes up in a hospital next to several corpses, reading Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time ("Vår Tids Hjälte" in the film), and caressing a blurry, transient image that shifts between Elisabet and/or Alma's faces.
Farewell My Concubine spans 53 years, presenting the lives of two men against the historical backdrop of a country in upheaval. It is about the story of Dieyi and Xiaolou and how their lives are affected by the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s and the victory of the Communists in 1949.
On October 2, 1988, Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal), a troubled teenager living in Middlesex, Virginia, is awakened and led outside by a figure in a monstrous rabbit costume, who introduces himself as "Frank" and tells him the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. At dawn, Donnie returns home to find a jet engine has crashed into his bedroom. His older sister, Elizabeth (Maggie Gyllenhaal), informs him the FAA investigators do not know where it came from.
Zac was born on Christmas in 1960. He had a special relationship with his father Gervais, but things began to fall apart as Zac's non-masculine ways started to show. Their unique relationship officially came to an end when Gervais comes home to find Zac dressed in his mother's clothes. Ever since then, he "had unwittingly declared war on his father".
The film is from the perspective of Gonzalo Infante, a privileged Chilean boy, during a time period in which the lower classes are politically mobilized, demanding more rights and forcing fundamental change. At the same time the upper middle class, including Gonzalo's own family, grow fearful of the growing socialist movement and plot against the country's elected president, Salvador Allende. Gonzalo's father, while sympathetic to the poor and not part of the right-wing movement, wants to leave the country to Italy, where he frequently travels for work, to avoid the Socialist policies. Sra. Infante is having an affair with a wealthy older gentleman, who gives Gonzalo gifts to keep him quiet. Gonzalo is sometimes bullied by his sister's boyfriend, who is a violent anti-Allende right-winger who uses nun-chucks to intimidate people. The family often buys products off of the black market, due to rationing and shortages.
Born in 1972 in Kansas, 8-year-olds Neil McCormick and Brian Lackey are sexually abused by their baseball coach. Both boys are targets for abuse due to their dysfunctional families: Neil's single mother, Ellen, is neglectful and preoccupied with a string of boyfriends, while Brian's parents are on the verge of divorce.
Max Fischer, a mature and eccentric 15-year-old, is a scholarship student at Rushmore Academy, a private school in Houston. He is both Rushmore's most extracurricular and least scholarly student. He spends nearly all of his time on elaborate extracurricular activities, caring little how it affects his grades. He also feuds with the school's headmaster, Dr. Guggenheim.
Sixteen-year-old Minnesota high-schooler Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) discovers she is pregnant with a child fathered by her friend and longtime admirer, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). She initially considers an abortion. Going to a local clinic run by a women's group, she encounters outside a schoolmate who is holding a rather pathetic one-person pro-life vigil. Once inside, however, Juno is alienated by the clinic staff's authoritarian and bureaucratic attitudes. She is particularly offended by their calling her "sexually active", a term which she feels demeans the highly emotional event by which she became pregnant. All of this decides her against abortion, and she decides to give the baby up for adoption. With the help of her friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby), Juno searches the ads in the Pennysaver and finds a couple she feels will provide a suitable home. She tells her parents, Mac (J.K. Simmons) and stepmother, Bren (Allison Janney), who offer their support. With Mac, Juno meets the couple, Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), in their expensive home and agrees to a closed adoption.
Laurent Chevalier is a nearly 15-year-old boy living in Dijon in 1954, who loves jazz, always receives the highest grades in his class and who opposes the First Indochina War. He has an unloving father who's a gynecologist and an affectionate Italian mother, Clara, as well as two older brothers, Thomas and Marc. One night, Thomas and Marc take Laurent to a brothel, where Laurent loses his virginity to a prostitute before they are disrupted by his drunken brothers. Upset, he leaves on a scouting trip, where he catches scarlet fever and is left with a heart murmur.
Laure is a 10-year-old child whose family moves to a new address in Paris. One day Laure sees a group of boys playing outside the window and goes to play with them, but they disappear quickly. Instead, Laure meets Lisa, a neighborhood girl, and Laure introduces himself as Mikäel. Lisa then introduces Mikäel to the rest of the neighborhood children stating that "he" is the new kid in the apartment complex. A bath scene in the film reveals that Mikäel has a vagina, and a following scene confirms that Mikäel was assigned female at birth as his mom addresses him and his sister as "girls." Mikäel becomes friends with Lisa and the boys and tries to hide his genitalia to appear like a boy (make it seem that he has a penis). At one point this leads Mikäel to pee his pants, which originally makes him embarrassed, but is soon forgotten. As they all play, Lisa and Mikäel develop crushes on each other and after swimming one day, Lisa kisses him. At this point, Mikäel also seems to be accepted into the group of boys.
Léo Lauzon est un garçon montréalais qui vit au sein d'une famille dysfonctionnelle dans un quartier pauvre de la ville. Il échappe à sa réalité par des rêveries. Entouré de malades mentaux, rêvassant et écrivant, il imagine que sa mère n'a pas été mise enceinte par son père, mais plutôt indirectement par un Sicilien à l'aide d'une tomate italienne contaminée. Il décide ainsi de se faire appeler Léolo Lozone. À l'aube de la puberté, il fantasme sur sa voisine Bianca.
The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century. When Thomas Törless (Mathieu Carrière) arrives at the academy, he learns how Anselm von Basini (Marian Seidowsky) has been caught stealing by fellow student Reiting (Fred Dietz), and is obliged to become Reiting's "slave," bowing to Reiting's sadistic rituals. Törless follows their relationship with intellectual interest but without emotional involvement.
Matthew (Michael Pitt) is an American exchange student who has come to Paris to study French. While at the Cinémathèque Française protesting the firing of Henri Langlois, he meets the free-spirited twins Théo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green). The three bond over a shared love of film.
Set in a Danish all-boys boarding school, one of the boys, Bo (Anders Agensø), develops a special relationship with the headmaster's young son Kim (Peter Bjerg). In the beginning of the film the headmaster is trying to get funding for a new gym for the school. The boarding school is likely a Christian one, as they have school prayer and the teachers keep referring to good Christian morals.
Howie Blitzer is deeply affected by the death of his mother in a car accident on the Long Island Expressway. His situation is exacerbated by his acrimonious relationship with his distant father Marty, who brought a trophy girlfriend into the house less than a month after his wife's death. Howie's only solace is the company of his best friend Gary, a juvenile delinquent and hustler. Although Gary is attracted to Howie, Howie is unsure of his own sexuality. They have two other friends their age, one of whom has an incestuous relationship with his sister. The four boys routinely break into neighborhood houses.