Cecilia (1983)

Four tales, each centered on a woman, journey inward to explore the enigmatic reality of their lives, connecting through a single narrative thread.

A widow with three children hires a handyman to fix her house during a major storm. When not doing home repairs, he shares his philosophy of believing in the power of the universe to deliver what we want.

After the sudden death of their father, four children face cruel treatment from their ruthless grandmother.

An English mother and her teenage son spend a week preparing the sale of their remote holiday house in the South of France. Fifteen-year-old Elliot struggles with his dawning sexuality and an increasing alienation from his mother, Beatrice. She in turn is confronted by the realisation that her marriage to his father, Philip, has grown loveless and the life she knows is coming to an end. When an enigmatic local teenager, Clément, quietly enters their lives, both mother and son are compelled to confront their desires and, finally, each other.

An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.

Two outsiders, both shaped by the circumstances that have brought them together, forge a deep and lasting love.

Pansy is a woman so full of rage that every interaction she has devolves into lashing out, whether at her utterly cowed husband and son, or random strangers who have the temerity to address her. In contrast, her younger sister Chantelle lives with her two vivacious daughters and plies a successful trade as a hairdresser, putting clients at their ease all day long. Yet beneath Pansy’s abrasive exterior are hints of a more fragile psyche, one motivated by fear and damaged by repressed pain.

When his mother dies, young Peter Ibbetson leaves Paris and his best friend, Mary, behind to live with a severe uncle in England. Years later, Peter is an architect with little time for women, until he begins a project with the Duke and Duchess of Towers. When Peter and the duchess become great friends, she reveals that she is Mary — but the duke soon suspects his wife of infidelity and challenges Peter to a duel, threatening the pair's second chance.

John, an ambitious but undisciplined New York City office worker, meets and marries Mary. They start a family, struggle to cope with marital stress, financial setbacks, and tragedy, all while lost amid the anonymous, pitiless throngs of the big city.

Follows Hazel King, a single mother determined to protect her daughter from the life she once had while defending and protecting those who can't protect themselves.