The Ghost Valley
The efforts of an aspiring filmmaker to include an unwilling female in his production.
Alain Tanner
Casts & Crew
Jacob Berger
Laura Morante
Caroline Cartier
Raymond Serra
Jane Holzer
Françoise Michaud
Also Directed by Alain Tanner
Six years before this story begins, Rosemonde killed a would-be rapist. She was acquitted and returned to working part-time in a Geneva bar. Back in the present, a brand new television station seeks to create a television film about Rosemonde's life. The project is helmed by independent producer Kevin assigns his screen-writing pal Paul to interview Rosemonde and use it for the basis of a fictionalized teleplay. Unfortuantely for him, the taciturn and cynical barmaid wants nothing to do with project and refuses to speak to Paul. This satirical French-Swiss drama follows Paul as he simultaneously attempts to get her story and into her bed. Since Rosemonde refuses to speak to him, Paul decides to pay his ex-lover Marie, a serious stage actress, become the bar maid's friend.
After 40 years Alain Tanner again travels to the port of Genoa, where he worked for a shipping company as a 22-year-old. On the back of his own memories he depicts the rough world of the dockworkers, another of those trades that has undergone fundamental changes as a result of recessions, modernisation and liberalisation. “The visual impression of the harbour and the city has changed very little, but what goes on there nowadays is completely different. The city is still as beautiful and alien and somewhat sad as before. But the port is dying, like so many other major ports. In Genoa, as elsewhere in Italy, the economic, social and political climate is highly explosive. But you also feel that things are in flow and the country is on the verge of some far-reaching changes. (...) In this film I wanted to explore my own memories of Genoa, uncover its present and guess at its future. Genoa, this beautiful, this sad, this alien town has become for me a metaphor for society in change.”
The European equivalent of "The Return of the Secaucus 7," this Swiss film looks at the lives of several men and women in their 30s as they confront the slim gains of the "revolutionary" sixties. Max, a dissatisfied copy editor; Myriam, a redhead into tantric sex; and Marie, a supermarket checker who gives unauthorized discounts to the elderly, search for renewed meaning on a communal farm. The title character, a six-year-old child, is the carrier of their hopes for the future.
Two young women from very different backgrounds journey into the countryside seeking respite from unsatisfactory lives and relationships, but ultimately find that there is no way back to the world they once knew.
Two men, arty though somewhat staid, are drawn to the spirited and quixotic Rosemonde....
Julie is a young woman from Rose Hill who arrives in rural Switzerland to marry her older pen-friend Marcel. She feels unhappy until she meets Jean, a younger man. However, his father disagrees.
Paul has left his wife and children. Now his wife and ex-mistress is on the hunt for him.
A group of 17 theater actors wonder about what happened to their teacher when he doesn't show up for a class.
Paul is married, a successful engineer, and a conservative candidate in an upcoming local election. He falls in love with Adriana, a café waitress from Italy. Paul's party is very critical of foreign labour and wants to keep Switzerland to the Swiss. Where Paul falls deeper and deeper into the relationship and is ready to leave his wife, Adriana feels the social pressure growing and has to make her own decision.
A young drifter meets up with a strange old man who claims that he has been taught to fly by birds