The Root of Evil

Vignettes of the lives of several residents of a Vienna suburb during a heat wave.

In the Huasteca of Tamaulipas during the most important dance festival of the region, Julia, Huapango national champion, announces her marriage to the distinguished and wealthy rancher Otilio, while Santiago, her dance partner, driven by jealousy and spite, decides to take revenge on the newlyweds.

Best friends Deco and Naldinho co-own a cargo boat in Brazil's Salvador da Bahia. They give a ride to a sultry prostitute named Karinna, and soon both men fall prey to her considerable sexual charms, pushing the bounds of their friendship to the limit.

At Christmas time, 19-year-old Simon returns home to visit his dysfunctional family with Louise, a fearless girl he met during his train ride. While Simon struggles to cope with the growing distance between him and his parents, he starts to examine his feelings when Louise develop a liaison of her own with his childhood friend Mathieu.

A discount store clerk strikes up an affair with a stock boy who considers himself the incarnation of Holden Caulfield.

Yoon-hee is harassed by her husband's excessive obsession and crazy love so much that even breathing is painful. Her sudden suicide attempt fails when someone takes her in his arms and saves her.

Mika, heiress to a Swiss chocolate company, is married to celebrated pianist André and stepmother to his son, Guillaume, whose mother died in a car wreck on his tenth birthday. Their lives are interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Jeanne, a young woman who has learned she was almost switched with Guillaume at birth.

Joe's a car salesman with a problem—he has two days to sell 12 cars or he loses his job. This would be a difficult task at the best of times but Joe has to contend with his girlfriends (he's two-timing), a missing teenage daughter and an ex-wife.

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...

In the beginning of the 19th century, Johannes Elias Alder is born in a small village in the Austrian mountains. While growing up he is considered strange by the other villagers and discovers his love of music, especially rebuilding and playing the organ at the village church. After experiencing an "acoustic wonder", his eye color changes and he can hear even the most subtle sounds.

Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. Opportunity knocks in the form of a wealthy U.S. shipbuilder who hires Tom to travel to Italy to bring back his playboy son, Dickie. Ripley worms his way into the idyllic lives of Dickie and his girlfriend, plunging into a daring scheme of duplicity, lies and murder.

When Hollywood superstar George Reeves dies in his home, private detective Louis Simo is hired to investigate his death and gets caught in a web of lies involving a big studio executive's wife. Based on a true story.

Budapest in the 1930s. Restaurant owner Laszlo hires pianist András to play in his restaurant. Both men fall in love with the beautiful waitress Ilona who inspires András to his only composition. His song of Gloomy Sunday is, at first, loved and then feared, for its melancholic melody sets off a chain of suicides. The fragile balance of the erotic ménage à trois is sent off kilter when the German Hans falls in love with Ilona as well.

Women enter and exit a science fiction author's life over the course of a few years after the author loses the woman he considers his one true love.

In the carefree days before World War I, introverted Austrian author Jules strikes up a friendship with the exuberant Frenchman Jim and both men fall for the impulsive and beautiful Catherine.

The life of boxer Jake LaMotta, whose violence and temper that led him to the top in the ring destroyed his life outside of it.

The attractive Oberleutnant Paul Wendlandt is stationed in North Africa as a fighter pilot. While in Berlin to deliver a report he is given a day's leave, and on the stage of the cabaret theatre "Skala" sees the popular Danish singer Hanna Holberg. For Paul it is love at first sight. When Hanna visits friends after the end of the performance, he follows her, and speaks to her in the U-Bahn. After the party in her friends' flat, he accompanies her home and chance throws them further together when an air raid warning forces them to take cover in the air raid shelter. Hanna reciprocates Paul's feelings, but after a night spent together Paul has to return immediately to the front. There now follows a whole series of misunderstandings, and one missed opportunity after another. While Hanna waits in vain for some sign of life from Paul, he is flying on missions in North Africa. When he tries to visit her in her Berlin flat, she is giving a Christmas concert in Paris.

A drifter lives in people's houses while they are away and repays them by doing chores for them. His life changes when he meets a beautiful woman who wants to escape her unhappy marriage.

The spoiled young heir to the decaying Amberson fortune comes between his widowed mother and the man she has always loved.

Hands sculpted in stone, hidden in the niches of an ancient house, are regarded as sources of a curse by the present inhabitant, a country gambling addict. Indeed, he goes to an early grave after experiencing bankruptcy. The house passes to another family, one of whose sons becomes obsessed with the hands. (A cross-editing of principal material from two Chilean films, LA CASA ESTA VACIA and LA DAMA DE LA MUERTE, with the addition of new American-made footage, to create a single story.)