Yoyo
Pierre Étaix
France – 1965

Cast: Pierre Étaix (Yoyo / Le millionaire), Claudine Auger (Isolina), Philippe Dionnet (Yoyo as a child), Luce Klein (The equestrienne)
Screenplay: Pierre Étaix, Jean-Claude Carrière
Cinematography: Jean Boffety
Production: C.A.P.A.C.
Language: French
Duration: 92 min
Color: Black and White

Synopsis: A millionaire has everything: servants, a mansion, land, any pleasure money can buy—except Love. Sooner or later he always finds himself alone in his study, sighing over the photograph of the one girl that got away. One fine day a travelling circus rolls into town and, although some time has passed, the man recognizes the lovely equestrienne as the girl from the picture. He finds out that her young boy, Yoyo, is his son. The market crash of the Great Depression leaves the millionaire destitute, which is just as well because he feels happier sharing the simple life of travelling circus performers than spending another night alone in the empty mansion. With WWII raging on in the background, Yoyo grows up to be a successful clown and, with the advent of television, becomes a renowned artist, a film-maker, a millionaire. Now that he has the means, he longs to restore his father’s estate to its former glory.

The Boys from Fengkuei
Feng gui lai de ren
(All the Youthful Days)
Hsiao-Hsien Hou
Taiwan – 1983

Cast: Chun-fang Chang, Shih Chang, Doze Niu, Chao P’eng-chue, Chung-Hua Tou, Li-Yin Yang
Screenplay: T’ien-wen Chu
Cinematography: Kun-Hou Chen
Language: Mandarin, Min Nan
Duration: 101 min
Color: Color

Synopsis: Ah-Ching and his friends have just finished school in their island fishing village, and now spend most of their time drinking, fighting, and getting into trouble with the police. They play crude practical jokes, gamble, drink, fight, and chase girls as they wait for compulsory military service. The most introspective of the group, Ah-Ching lives in two worlds, the dissonant world of his buddies and the traditional culture that comes back to him in flashes of memory of his father when he was a young boy. Constantly berated by his mother for his lack of ambition, Ah-Ching and two friends leave their traditional home in Penghu to look for work in the Southern city of Kaohsiung. On the surface, the boys are street-wise, but beneath their swagger, their naiveté is apparent. Ah-Ching’s sister offers the boys an apartment and they find jobs in a local factory, but an infatuation with a hoodlum’s girlfriend leaves Ah-Ching more alone than when he came to the city.

Bird People
Pascale Ferran
France – 2014Cast: Josh Charles (Gary Newman), Anaïs Demoustier (Audrey Camuzet), Roschdy Zem (Simon), Taklyt Vongdara (Akira), Geoffrey Cantor (Allan), Camélia Jordana (Leila)
Screenplay: Guillaume Bréaud, Pascale Ferran
Cinematography: Julien Hirsch
Production: Archipel 35, France 2, Cinéma Titre et Structure Production, Canal+, Ciné+, France Télévisions, Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC), Région Ile-de-France Cofinova 8, Procirep, Angoa-Agicoa, MEDIA Programme of the European Union, Cofinova 5, Cofinova 6
Language: French, English, Japanese
Duration: 127 min
Color: Color

Synopsis: Gary is an American engineer who arrives in Paris to finalize details on a major project in Dubai; Audrey is a twentysomething who works as a maid in the airport hotel where Gary is staying. Their shared sense of ennui and indecision is obvious, but their journeys of self-discovery proceed on separate tracks. Gary awakens mid-business-trip to the realization that both his professional and personal lives feel empty and unsatis­fying, and informs his business partners and wife Elisabeth that he will not be returning to any of them. Audrey, meanwhile, finds her daily clean­ing routines upended by a fantastical transformative event. One mysterious evening, she discovers the ability to free herself from her chambermaid duties to observe, unseen, an assortment of individuals within and beyond the confines of the airport hotel.

Indochine
Régis Wargnier
France – 1992Cast: Catherine Deneuve (Éliane Devries), Vincent Perez (Jean-Baptiste Le Guen), Linh Dan Pham (Camille), Jean Yanne (Guy), Dominique Blanc (Yvette)
Screenplay: Erik Orsenna, Louis Gardel, Catherine Cohen, Régis Wargnier
Cinematography: François Catonné
Production: Paradis Films, La Générale d’Images, Bac Films, Orly Films, Ciné Cinq, Centre National de la Cinématographie, Club des Investissments Canal+, Sofica, Sofinergie, Investimage, Cofimage
Language: French, Vietnamese
Duration: 152 min
Color: Color

Synopsis: Born and raised in French Indochina, Éliane is the imperious owner of a rubber-plantation. When her best friends, members of the Nguyễn Dynasty, die in a plane crash, she adopts their little girl Camille to raise as her own. Meanwhile, Éliane begins a torrid affair with a younger French navy officer, Jean-Baptiste. Some years later, when Camille has grown into a young woman, a civil unrest incident brings her and Jean-Baptiste together, and they fall love. Éliane is livid and campaigns to have Jean-Baptiste transferred. Camille marries Tanh, the son of wealthy merchants but a secret communist sympathizer. Camille also has a secret: she still loves Jean-Baptiste, and now that she has freed herself from mother’s watchful eyes, she heads towards his outpost. As she travels the country, she begins to understand the people of her homeland. When the colonial government tears her away from Jean-Baptiste and their infant child Étienne, Camille is imprisoned for crimes against the state, while Éliane adopts the baby. Camille experiences a political awakening and becomes a communist, while her incarcerated lover Jean-Baptiste, awaiting a court-martial, is found dead in his cell under peculiar circumstances. As Vietnam descends into civil war, Éliane abandons the plantation and relocates to France together with Étienne.