Rie Santafe

Actress and model Rie Rasmussen wrote, directed and stars in this multi-layered drama of a woman's struggle to escape political chaos on two continents. Adria (Rasmussen) is a young Serbian woman who is living in Kosovo in 1999, during the latter days of the civil war and ethnic violence that swept through the nation. Adria is befriended by a man who is kind to her but is emotionally unstable, and with his help they escape to Belgrade, which is safer but still gripped by crime and violence…

It is partly thanks to his acquaintances among writers and painters from the end of the XIXth century that Debussy’s idiom evolved. In a context of heated international politics, the return to French classicism allows some artists to reaffirm the values of the age of Louis XIV. Indeed, his so prodigiously creative music, which today is played with too much caution, makes no claim of being avant-garde. In the musician’s eyes, it simply expresses the pleasure to play and to discover new sounds.

It is partly thanks to his acquaintances among writers and painters from the end of the XIXth century that Debussy’s idiom evolved. In a context of heated international politics, the return to French classicism allows some artists to reaffirm the values of the age of Louis XIV. Indeed, his so prodigiously creative music, which today is played with too much caution, makes no claim of being avant-garde. In the musician’s eyes, it simply expresses the pleasure to play and to discover new sounds.

Set in Paris, the plot (despite the title, not even dangerously close to Laclos as has been suggested elsewhere) concerns a low-key private detective agency run by Rie and her buffoonish partner Kishin (ex-rockstar Uchida), two expats who tick along between cases by giving guided tours of the city to busloads of Japanese tourists. After the wealthy Okuyama (Kitano) hires them to trail his French mistress Loren (Galin) whom he believes to be having an affair, the feeble-willed Kishin finds himself seduced by this femme fatale and way out of his depth in a seamy underworld of rich Japanese businessmen, S&M games and huge piles of money. Meanwhile Rie is being wined and dined by Okuyama who seems to have a hidden agenda all of his own. -