The Little King

A man discovers he's no longer as close to his ear as he once was in this absurdist comedy. Jeff is minding his own business when a phonograph record tossed from a passing car accidentally cuts off his ear. The ear falls into traffic, gets stuck on the windshield of another vehicle, and begins a long, strange journey, passing from car to car and hand to hand across the country. Jeff, however, can still hear whatever his separated ear is picking up, and is trying to follow the sounds in hopes of catching up with his former body part. However, a doctor warns him he only has a few hours to find his ear, otherwise reattachment will be impossible; in the meantime, Jeff's former girlfriend wastes several of his precious minutes with a discussion about the notion of giving their relationship another try.

1999 Madeleine is the first step in an ambitious project by the French filmmaker Laurent Bouhnik to make one film per year between 1999-2009, recounting the turn of the century in an interweaving narrative pattern. Episode one is about Madeline, a lonely woman obsessed by religion and cleanliness. Her solitary existence leads her to place an advertisement for a man willing to share his life with a 'single, working 35-year-old.' She is a woman of our times who is caught between the paradoxes of modern life and individual needs for communication. The world offers her opportunities to satisfy material needs but, unfortunately, this is to the detriment of her spiritual needs.