ProvidenceMovies like Providence
- Key Features:
- Writers life, Family dynamics, Alcoholism, Memory, Mortality, Introspection, Unreliable narrator, Character study, Existentialism, Aging, Regret, Melancholy, Internal conflict, Psychological drama, Director-driven, Cerebral
- Tone:
- serious, cynical, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Film buffs, Intellectual viewers, Literary enthusiasts, Character-driven drama fans
- Emotional Arc:
- Introspection → Melancholy
Providence

On the eve of his 78th birthday, the ailing, alcoholic writer Clive Langham spends a painful and sleepless night mentally composing and recomposing scenes for a novel in which characters based on his own family are shaped by his fantasies and memories, alongside his caustic commentary on their behaviour.
Providence
Lui, a struggling author with a heart condition, and his wife Elle, a retired psychiatrist, find their idyllic life shattered when Elle begins to succumb to the effects of dementia.

Paul Rivers, an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English émigré; Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife and mother of two girls; and Jack Jordan, a born-again ex-con, are brought together by a terrible accident that changes their lives.

David loves his wife, Gillian. Unfortunately, she died two years ago. David deals with his grief by continuing his romance with Gillian during walks with her "ghost" on the beach at night. While David lives in the past, other family problems crop up in the present in the real world....

Louis, a terminally ill writer, returns home after a long absence to tell his family that he is dying.

An upper middle-class French family celebrates a birthday in a restaurant. In one evening and during one meal, family history, tensions, collective and separate grudges, delights, and memories both clash and coalesce.

Three friends navigate mid-life crises: a blocked writer, a disillusioned doctor, and a charming man facing bankruptcy and divorce. As their struggles strain friendships, a younger man captures the attention of one friend's wife, complicating their lives further.

Rémi is a man trapped in a deteriorating marriage. When his wife is unexpectedly killed in a car accident, Rémi is left with his stepdaughter, Marion, who chooses to stay with him rather than live with her birth father. After the initial shock passes, Rémi is caught off-guard when Marion begins expressing her attraction to him. Initially repulsed, Marion's mature beauty wears him down as he finally caves to her seductions.

Failed musician Jay abandoned his family and now earns a living as head bartender in a trendy London pub. Every Wednesday afternoon, a woman comes to his house for graphic, almost wordless, sex. One day, Jay follows her and learns about her. This eventually disrupts their relationship.

Arthur is invited to a New Year's Eve party to celebrate the year 2000. His girlfriend Lucie would like a baby from him but he refuses. Through the ceiling of the toilets, he discovers a passage leading to this futurist Paris. There, he meets an old man Ako who affirms he is his son and that he wants to exist. Otherwise he will vanish into the air. Arthur is still hesitant because his life is an unfulfilled one: a has a little lucrative job, is uncertain about his future and things are getting out of hand when Ako discovers the passage and interferes in the party.

In 1947, long-retired and near the end of his life, Sherlock Holmes grapples with an unreliable memory and must rely on his housekeeper's son as he revisits the still-unsolved case that led to his retirement.

The mind of Pierre Bérard, a successful middle-aged architect, is torn between his unstable present with Hélène, his younger lover, and his happy memories of the past with Catherine, his ex-wife; but his true destiny awaits him at a crossroads on his way to Rennes…

A son in denial of a serious illness. A mother facing the unbearable. And between them a doctor fighting to do his job and bring them to acceptance. The three of them have one year and four seasons to come together and understand what it means to die while living.

A widower and his daughter witness the retirement of a colleague of his and the closing of her department at her university.

A widowed professor living in Paris develops a special relationship with a younger French woman.

A busy executive learns during a meeting that his mother may be dying and rushes home to her side. He ends up being his father's caretaker and becomes closer to him than ever before. Estranged from his own son, the executive comes to realize what has been missing in his own life.

A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.

Marion is about to divorce from her husband and takes her 15-year-old niece, Pauline, on a vacation to Granville. There, she meets an old love...

Nelly leaves her lazy, unemployed husband to work for retired judge Mr Arnaud, forty years her senior, after he offers to clear her bills for her. While she types his memoirs the two develop a close friendship, but Arnaud becomes jealous when Nelly begins dating his good-looking young publisher.

A woman is suspected of her husband's murder, and their blind son faces a moral dilemma as the sole witness.

When a teenager suddenly disappears without a trace, the case is assigned to an alcoholic police officer who maintains a complicated relationship with his own troubled teenage son, suspected of drug trafficking.

Clarissa Dalloway looks back on her youth as she readies for a gathering at her house. The wife of a legislator and a doyenne of London's upper-crust party scene, Clarissa finds that the plight of ailing war veteran Septimus Warren Smith reminds her of a past romance with Peter Walsh. In flashbacks, young Clarissa explores her possibilities with Peter.

Richie Bravo, once upon a time a successful pop star, chases after his faded fame in wintry Rimini. Trapped between permanent intoxication and concerts for busloads of tourists, his world starts to collapse when his adult daughter breaks into his life.

After a bad breakup, a college-aged Parisian moves into her father's flat only to discover that he is living with his new girlfriend - a young woman her age.

Sibyl, a jaded psychotherapist, returns to her first passion: writing. But her newest patient Margot, a troubled up-and-coming actress, proves to be a source of inspiration that is far too tempting. Fascinated almost to the point of obsession, Sibyl becomes more and more involved in Margot’s tumultuous life, reviving volatile memories that bring her face to face with her past.

A writer leaves his upper-class life and journeys with a woman claiming to be his sister, and her two friends.

A British crime novelist travels to her publisher's upmarket summer house in Southern France to seek solitude in order to work on her next book. However, the unexpected arrival of the publisher's daughter induces complications and a subsequent crime.

An Irish miser, his morphine addicted wife, their debauched older son, and a gravely ill younger son. A quiet Connecticut vacation home on one foggy day in August 1912 becomes the backdrop for domestic decline.

Damien is a professor of Chinese civilization who lives with his wife, Iva, a theater director, and their son Noé. Their love is mired in a mountain of routine and disenchantment. To help keep Zorica from getting deported, Iva gets Damien to promise he’ll go to his father, a state department official, for help. But Damien and his father have a distant and cool relationship. And this mission is a risky business which will send Damien spiraling downward and over the edge...

Willy Loman is an over-the-hill salesman who faces a personal turning point when he loses his job and attempts to make peace with his family: Willy's long-suffering wife Linda, and Biff and Happy, his troubled sons and his life.

A philistine in the art film business, Jeremy Prokosch is a producer unhappy with the work of his director. Prokosch has hired Fritz Lang to direct an adaptation of "The Odyssey," but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb at the box office, he brings in a screenwriter to energize the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.

A Pulitzer-winning writer grapples with being a widower and father after a mental breakdown, while, 27 years later, his grown daughter struggles to forge connections of her own.

After four years apart, Ahmad returns to his wife Marie in Paris in order to progress their divorce. During his brief stay, he cannot help noticing the strained relationship between Marie and her daughter Lucie. As he attempts to improve matters between mother and daughter Ahmad unwittingly lifts the lid on a long buried secret...

A man refuses all assistance from his daughter as he ages and, as he tries to make sense of his changing circumstances, he begins to doubt his loved ones, his own mind and even the fabric of his reality.

A group of families on a tropical holiday discover that the secluded beach where they are staying is somehow causing them to age rapidly – reducing their entire lives into a single day.

During a year, a very content couple approaching retirement are visited by friends and family less happy with their lives.

As Constance (Natasha Richardson) and Nina (Toni Collette) gather at the deathbed of their mother, Ann (Vanessa Redgrave), they learn for the first time that their mother lived an entire other lifetime during one evening 50 years ago. In vivid flashbacks, the young Ann (Claire Daines) spends one night with a man named Harris (Patrick Wilson), who was the love of her life.

When a deadly secret rots the mind of a grieving widower, the decision to work alone on a deserted island morphs into a terrifying race to save his sanity and his life.

Since his wife died, Inspector Louis Baroni (Philippe Noiret) has become a virtual recluse, preferring the solitude of his quiet house to the company of others. His period of mournful contemplation is broken when he is called out to look into the suspicious death of Madame Morlaix who, according to her husband Edouard (Michel Serrault), fell from an upstairs window. Curious to find out more, Baroni begins his inquiry.

The professional and emotional cross-currents between two romantically entwined theater actors played by the director’s son Louis and Anna Mouglalis.

A man becomes haunted by his past and is presented with a mysterious legacy that causes him to re-think his current situation in life.

A middle-aged woman leaves her partner and drifts back to her ex-husband, while the lives of her middle class friends intersect with her own.

Helene, a pill-addicted anesthesiologist, is mourning the death of her boyfriend when, through a car accident she causes, she chances to meet the lethargic Gilles, a young man who lives for free at his mother's hotel. Gilles pursues Helene romantically, and she eventually softens up. Gilles, however, is also devoted to Bernard, a petty crook who revels in mugging gay men. All three struggle with relationships that seem to be going nowhere.

Claire is a midwife and has devoted her life to others. At a moment when she is preoccupied by the imminent closure of the maternity clinic where she works, her life is further turned upside down when Béatrice, her father's former mistress, turns up on the scene. Béatrice is a capricious and selfish woman, Claire's exact opposite.

Lea and her husband Marc have known Francis and his wife Karine for a very long time. Over the years, each one of them has been assigned a specific role. The balance and dynamic of the group is blown up when Lea decides to write a novel, which turns into an immediate bestseller…

An American writer living in exile in London, Philip listens to women. His English mistress, who visits him regularly in the studio that serves as their refuge. A student he loved in another life. A former lover confined to a hospital in New York.

Léonard Monestier owns a large fortune, alas his wife Cynthia made a bad investment in a worthless oil concession. Far from letting this get him down, Léonard decides to find a sucker to buy this concession from him. Right on cue appears Antoine Brévin, a befuddled billionaire who is very interested in Léonard's beautiful daughter Patricia and would do anything to win her hand...

In early 1920s France, an author, lying on his deathbed, looks at various photographs and is flooded with memories of the people and events that have shaped his life.

A celebrity journalist, juggling her busy career and personal life, has her life over-turned by a freak car accident.

Beautiful young manicurist Carole suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen, leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend, Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness.

As young French couple Gilles and Marion officially separate, we see, in reverse order, the milestone moments in their relationship: Gilles revealing his unfaithfulness at a tense dinner party; Marion giving birth to their premature son while Gilles is elsewhere; Gilles and Marion's joyous wedding; and, finally, the fateful moment when they meet as acquaintances at an Italian beach resort, and their love affair begins.

Indolent aristocrat Tony employs competent Barrett as his manservant and all seems to be going well until Barrett persuades Tony to hire his sister as a live-in maid.

A young filmmaker in 1960s Paris juggles directing a cheesy sci-fi debacle, directing his own personal art film, coping with his crumbling relationship with his girlfriend, and a new-found infatuation with the sci-fi film's starlet.

At once an intimate chronicle of a romance and a sprawling portrait of life in early 1990s France following the intertwining journeys of Jacques, a worldly Parisian writer, and Arthur, a curious, carefree and much-younger university student who is just beginning to live. Brought together by chance, the two men find themselves navigating a casual fling that gradually deepens into a tender, transformative bond.

Paris 2052. Julia, 80 years old, had a fulfilled life. On her birthday, she reflects on the decisions and circumstances that could have led her on different paths. From the age of 17 to this day, her life was full of small but critical moments. Each was a turning point with dramatic consequences. What would have happened if she had forgotten her passport, chosen a different line at the store, driven the scooter this one time...? Is her life a succession of coincidences and accidents or a ready-made path?

A common friend's sudden death brings three men, married with children, to reconsider their lives and ultimately leave the country together. But mindless enthusiasm for regained freedom will be short-lived.

A young husband and father, perfectly content with his life, falls in love with another woman.

Matthieu is a 33 year old Parisian who finds out that the father he never knew has died and decides to go to his funeral in order to meet his two siblings in Quebec. But once in Montréal, he realizes that nobody is aware of his existence or even interested in it. He is alone, in hostile territory…

Nick and Meg Burrows return to Paris, the city where they honeymooned, to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary and rediscover some romance in their long-lived marriage. The film follows the couple as long-established tensions in their marriage break out in humorous and often painful ways.

Following a breakdown and suicide attempt, an aging actor becomes involved with a much younger woman but soon finds that it's difficult to keep pace with her.

Jean, a married 40-year-old filmmaker, and his young working class lover, Catherine, engage in a circular series of spectacular blow-ups and tentative reunions, their mutual desire a fire that burns them again and again.

A drunken, self-destructive woman called Betty wanders into a Parisian bar where she meets middle-aged alcoholic Laure. Laure decides to take care of Betty. Recovering in a hotel room, Betty begins to recount to Laure the story of her bourgeois life and her unhappy and unfaithful marriage.

The relationships of two couples become complicated and deceitful when the man from one couple meets the woman of the other.

A famous pianist at the twilight of his career meets a free-spirited music critic who soon becomes his rock as his mental state deteriorates.

A thirteen-year-old French girl deals with moving to a new city and school in Paris, while at the same time her parents are getting a divorce.

A novelist fed up with the establishment profiting from "Black" entertainment uses a pen name to write a book that propels him into the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.

Desperately seeking inspiration for the follow-up novel to his bestseller "Inexorable", Marcel Bellmer moves in his wife's old family mansion with his family.

When his young son is killed in a hit and run accident, Charles Thenier resolves to hunt down and murder the killer. By chance, Thenier makes the acquaintance of an actress, Helène Lanson, who was in the car at the time of the accident. He then meets Helène’s brother-in-law, Paul Decourt, a truly horrible individual.

In a strange and isolated chateau, a man becomes acquainted with a woman and insists that they have met before.

Jérôme Varenne, a French financier, lives and works in Shanghai with Chen-Li, his life and business partner. One day, during a short stay in Paris, while paying a call to his mother, he is very displeased to learn from her and his hated brother, that the family house in Ambray is going to be sold. Jerome decides to go to the town where he grew up to see what is going on. Little does he know how eventful his escapade will be. Little does he know that it will change his life from soup to nuts...

Ana is confronted with body and desire at three key moments of her life. As a young girl, she brings her dead grandpa back to life. In her puberty, she discovers the power of decay and sexuality. Finally, she wrestles with loss and loneliness when she returns to her parental home, now derelict.

After a love affair ends badly, a young Parisian named Paul sinks into the same kind of deep depression that led his sister to kill herself. He moves back home with his father and aimless brother Jonathan but refuses to get out of bed.

Since his wife's death, Andrew Blake is depressed. In an ultimate impetus, he leaves London to go back to France, in the house he met her. This journey through happy days memories won't go as planned.

Although he's now eighty years old, Claude Lherminier is still as imposing as he ever was. But his bouts of forgetfulness and confusion are becoming increasingly frequent. Even so, he stubbornly refuses to admit that anything is wrong. Carole, his oldest daughter, wages a daily and taxing battle to ensure that he's not left on his own. Claude suddenly decides on a whim to go to Florida. What lies behind this sudden trip?

Unable to cope with a recent personal tragedy, LA's top celebrity shrink turns into a pothead with no concern for his appearance and a creeping sense of his inability to help his patients.

Riko is an honest and hardworking man who can count on a group of real friends and a loving wife. Things change after he loses his job and experiences a midlife crisis.

Georges and Anne are in their eighties. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Their daughter, who is also a musician, lives abroad with her family. One day, Anne has a stroke, and the couple's bond of love is severely tested.

The story of a son's conflicting memories of his dying father.

Shortly before her wedding, art gallery director Nora travels from Paris to Grenoble to visit her preteen son, Elias, who is spending time with her aging professor father, Louis, recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. During her stay, she reaches out to her former lover, Ismaël, a viola player and father figure to Elias who has been committed against his will to a mental hospital. Ismaël, however, has his own problems to sort out.

Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.

Alain, a successful Parisian publisher struggling to adapt to the digital revolution, has major doubts about the new manuscript of Léonard, one of his long-time authors — another work of auto-fiction recycling his love affair with a minor celebrity. Selena, Alain’s wife, a famous stage actress, is of the opposite opinion.

It takes him suddenly at 40 years: Frédéric wants a baby, Claire never wanted one and they agreed on that. He commits the unforgivable and makes a child behind her back. Claire turns into a whale and Frédéric becomes a doting father.

In an industrializing Italian town, a married woman, rendered mentally unstable after a traffic accident, drifts into an affair with a friend of her husband.

C.S. Lewis, a world-renowned writer and professor, leads a passionless life until he meets spirited poet Joy Gresham.

Put in charge of his young son, Ali leaves Belgium for Antibes to live with his sister and her husband as a family. Ali's bond with Stephanie, a killer whale trainer, grows deeper after Stephanie suffers a horrible accident.

Marion is a woman who has learned to shield herself from her emotions. She rents an apartment to work undisturbed on her new book, but by some acoustic anomaly she can hear all that is said in the next apartment in which a psychiatrist holds his office. When she hears a young woman tell that she finds it harder and harder to bear her life, Marion starts to reflect on her own life. After a series of events she comes to understand how her unemotional attitude towards the people around her affected them and herself.

On one random day in the San Fernando Valley, a dying father, a young wife, a male caretaker, a famous lost son, a police officer in love, a boy genius, an ex-boy genius, a game show host and an estranged daughter will each become part of a dazzling multiplicity of plots, but one story.

A grandmother has a passionate affair with a man half her age, who is also sleeping with her daughter.

Roman and Hanka have a loving marriage, but his impotence has led to her having an affair. The unbearable situation drives Roman to extreme measures both physically and mentally, testing their love and his own will to live.

A minor train accident in rural Nebraska gradually unveils a mystery involving the town's reclusive bank clerk.

Anthony Richmond schemes to get the fortune of his tyrannical, wheelchair-using tycoon uncle Charles Richmond by persuading Maria, a nurse he employs, to marry him.

A divorced teacher suddenly becomes jealous of everyone, including her daughter, friends and neighbors.

A Russian poet, Andrei and his interpreter, Eugenia travel to Italy to research the life of an 18th-century composer.

After his father's death, a young man is introduced to a world of hedonism and depravity by his amoral mother.

Set in France during the mid-1970s, Vanessa, a former dancer, and her husband Roland, an American writer, travel the country together. They seem to be growing apart, but when they linger in one quiet, seaside town they begin to draw close to some of its more vibrant inhabitants, such as a local bar/café-keeper and a hotel owner.

A recently retired man embarks on a journey to his estranged daughter's wedding, only to discover more about himself and life than he ever expected.

The film spans 30 years in Julieta’s life from a nostalgic 1985 where everything seems hopeful, to 2015 where her life appears to be beyond repair and she is on the verge of madness.

A drunken playboy stands to lose a wealthy inheritance when he falls for a woman that his family doesn't like.

Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories fill the gaps between camcorder footages as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the troubled man she didn't.

