Intimate Strangers
(Paramount)

Kitchen Stories
(IFC / MGM)

The Story Of The Weeping Camel
(New Line)

Here are three imports that all share one major plot point: charm. In the quirky Intimate Strangers, the life of a French tax accountant is turned upside down, when a beautiful woman mistakes his office for the therapist’s down the hall. She begins to describe intimate details of her life and difficulties in her marriage, scarcely allowing her “doctor” to get a word in edgewise. He decides to play along for a while and an unusual bond is forged between them as they begin to open up their innermost secrets to one another. Filled with sweetness and humor, the film also has a dark side that bodes for unsettling moments and keeps the viewer wondering where the story is heading.

From Sweden comes an even quirkier tale of relationships in Kitchen Stories, as an unlikely friendship is created between a researcher assigned to observe the domestic life of single men and a crusty old Norwegian farmer who begrudgingly allows the stranger into his home. It’s the 1950’s and the Swedish Home Research Institute has been studying the efficiency of housewives in their kitchens. When their attention turns to men, a team is dispatched to live in a small trailer on the subject’s property and set up a tall chair in their kitchen to silently observe their day-to-day routines. Conversation and personal contact is forbidden, but it doesn’t take long before protocols are scuttled and a relationship is begun. Kitchen Stories played the local art houses for a couple of weeks last year and was unanimously lauded by critics around the world. The DVD is your chance to catch a true gem and one that could not be made in Hollywood, given their commercial agendas.

The same might be said of The Story Of The Weeping Camel a beautiful tale of family (both human and not) that’s part fable, part documentary. Shot in Mongolia’s Gobi desert, we meet an extended family of nomads who make their living by herding camels, sheep and goats and who live in well-appointed yerts, approximately 50 kilometers from civilization. When one of their camels has a difficult birth, then rejects her baby, it portends certain death for the infant. After all attempts to reunite mother and child fail, the family’s two young boys are dispatched to find a musician to perform an ancient ceremony that promises to bring the two camels back together again. Along the way they encounter aspects of Western culture that reshape their view of the world and permanently alter it in the end.

If you’re looking for films that are a little kinder, gentler and way more interesting than what’s playing in you’re local Cineplex, take one of these three home – you won’t be disappointed. -- David Bassin