…Effi Briest: directed by Hermine Huntgeburth and starring Julia Jentsch, Sebastian Koch, Barbara Auer, Juliana Köhler & Misel Maticevic.

This film is based on the 1894 German novel Effi Briest written by Theodor Fontane. This book is considered Fontane’s masterpiece and one of the greatest realist novels of all time. The book has been turned in a movie before, i.e. in 1974. This film was directed by R. W. Fassbinder.

Effi Briest is an esquire’s daughter in the North of Germany. When she is seventeen she is given in marriage to baron Geert von Innstetten, who is twice her age. She has an affair and when her husband finds out, years later, he leaves her. She then goes back to her parents to die there in misery.

…Chéri: This French/British/German drama film is directed by Stephen Frears and stars Michelle Pfeifer, Rupert Friend & Kathy Bates.

The film is an adaptation of the 1920 novel Chéri by French author Colette.

In 1900s Paris, a young man called Chéri has an affair with a much older woman. When he is forced to end the relationship he withdraws to a fantasy world.