Que la barque se brise, que la jonque s'entrouvre (2001)

Roxana Aubrey decides to drop her studies and escape her life in Paris for a free diving course in the south of France. She is quickly pulled into a life that reaches new depths brought by the weight of an ocean's descent.

In the early 20th-century, Frenchman Claude meets Englishwoman Ann in Paris. Ann invites him to her family home, intending him for her sister Muriel. Claude falls for Muriel, but families demand year-long separation before approving marriage.

Captives of the very relationships that define and sustain them, nine women resiliently meet the travails and disappointments of life.

A World War II prisoner returns home to his childhood sweetheart. However, back home, he discovers that he has to compete to win her love.

Muslim prince Ali and Georgian aristocrat Nino have grown up in the Russian province of Azerbaijan. Their tragic love story sees the outbreak of the First World War and the world’s struggle for Baku’s oil. Ultimately they must choose to fight for their country’s independence or for each other.

Pregnant out of wedlock, an educated young woman is pressured by her father into an arranged marriage with a lonely farmer in this drama set during WWII.

Sidonie Perceval, an established French writer, is mourning her deceased husband. Invited to Japan for the reedition of her first book, she is welcomed by her local editor who takes her to Kyoto, the city of shrines and temples. As they travel together through the Japanese spring blossoms, she slowly opens up to him. But the ghost of her husband follows Sidonie: she will have to finally let go of the past to let herself love again.

A novelist is blinded in a car crash that killed his wife and several years later rediscovers his passion for life and writing when he embarks on an affair with the neglected wife of an indicted businessman.

Jeanne is a young woman, striking but otherwise without qualities. Her mother tries to get her a job in the office of a lawyer, Bleistein, her lover years ago. Jeanne fails the interview but falls into a relationship with Franck, a wrestler whose dreams and claims of being in a legitimate business partnership Jeanne is only too happy to believe. When Franck is arrested, he turns on Jeanne for her naivety; she's stung and seeks attention by making up a story of an attack on a train. Is there any way out for her?

A philosophy professor has an illicit affair with one of his students, a bright yet troubled girl who lives alone.