The Appointment

After vowing to never become like his childhood abuser, a powerless son spends his life as the family messiah, only to become even more violent than his own father.

A rhythmically captivating exploration of love and loss at the fin-de-siècle. An amorous relationship between two women abruptly cut short. Dissolving under the impact of the loss of her soul mate, the surviving lover is drawn into the depths of mid-winter forests, into spheres of the subconscious, initiated by unknown forces. There is no return. The stream-of-consciousness narration, a collage of poetic fragments, features words by 16th century lesbian poet Katherine Philips, 19th century fin de siècle poets Renée Vivien and Algernon Charles Swinburne whose agnostic, visionary poetry lend the film a hypnotic quality.

It's 1961 in the remote Argentinean Patagonia. A family of Nazi fugitives arrives at teen Frida's house looking for refuge, wanting to live a normal life with total impunity. How will this affect the youngest members of these two families?

"But shouldn't we all be happy", asks Anshu. "But why should we be happy! That is not our task in life", replies Sanjeev. The Art Of Dying is a simple story of a young and ambitious guy [Anshu] who reaches a state of emotional disintegration when all that he digs for turns out to be sand. And just when he seems to have lost himself, enters a rank stranger [Sanjeev] in his life. A rank stranger with rank strange ways of life. In the course of two very lively days, Sanjeev warms his way into the heart of Anshu by statements like "The problem with reality is that it doesn't carry background music" and "When choosing between two evils, I always go for the one that I've not tried before". Running by the beach, dancing to music, gulping down coke with pizza, playing chess and a lot of cricket, the two do all that and more, while talking about each other. And before he knows, Anshu has got answers to a whole lot of his distress. Answers like "Do you always want to be right or you want to be happy?" The Art Of Dying is about how two good days with a stranger brings peace to a heart carrying 19 months of turbulence. It's like washing one's face after a hard day's work, as Anshu puts it.

A young woman, Electra, works at a float therapy center, but is afraid of floating, because she's afraid of the lid closing on her, being trapped... at least on the surface. One evening while babysitting, she has an epiphany-but she forgets it immediately. Electra enlists help trying to remember her epiphany, and must face her fear, of the float tank, and beyond.

Dearie Lane loves Fred Millard, but she turns down his offer of marriage because she was once involved with the disreputable Mark Winfield. When she explains the situation, Fred forgives her, and they get married. For a while they live happily in a modest home. But the situation gets complex when Winfield, who owns the house, comes by to collect a delinquent payment and suddenly dies. Dearie, afraid that Fred will not understand what really happened, gets a boarder and her cook to help her hide the body. At midnight they carry it down the stairs to the countryside, but Fred hears their steps creaking on the stairs. All seems lost when the police find the body and the suspicious Fred finds Winfield's hat under a couch. He opens Dearie's private trunk and discovers the fancy clothes that Winfield gave her. Fred goes after Dearie, furiously chopping with an ax through the closet door behind which she is hiding. Dearie persuades him to listen and explains that she had kept the clothes only because she thought Fred would admire them, and that in fact Winfield died from a heart attack.