Cara Seymour

In 1961 London, Jenny Mellor (Carey Mulligan) is a 16-year-old schoolgirl on track to get accepted to Oxford University. Her studies are controlled by her strict father, Jack (Alfred Molina). Her parents (Mother Marjorie (Cara Seymour)) are conservative & want the best for her. They trust Jenny completely & give her the freedom to live her life the way she wants. But her parents are very disapproving of all the class boys that Jenny brings to her home. Jenny's dad likes people who know what they want to be doing in life. He appreciates Jenny for her focus on getting into Oxford & hence automatically disapproves of any young man who comes into their home & says that they aren't sure of what they want to be doing next in life. He calls them "teddy boy". After youth orchestra rehearsals, Jenny waits at a bus stop on the street in heavy rain when David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard), an older man stops his Bristol 405 and tells her that he is a music lover and is worried about her cello getting wet, and he convinces Jenny to put her cello in his car while she walks alongside. As the rain becomes heavier, Jenny asks David if she can sit inside the car. The two talk about music and, before being dropped off, Jenny confides that she is looking forward to attending university and being able to live a life of culture, doing things such as going to art galleries and watching French films. The following week, David has flowers delivered to Jenny's house, wishing her luck at her youth orchestra's concert. Later, she sees him in town and approaches him. David asks Jenny if she is free to go and see a concert and have supper with him and his friends. She happily agrees and thanks him. On the night of the concert, Jack disapproves of Jenny going, but when David comes by to pick up Jenny, he easily charms Jack into letting him take Jenny and bring her home later than her normal curfew. David introduces Jenny to his equally charming friends, including a lady by the name of Helen (Rosamund Pike) who ends up becoming a mentor to Jenny in the grown-up group of David's. Jenny is smitten by the high lifestyle of effortless elegance of Helen & wants to emulate her. Danny (Dominic Cooper) is Helen's "boyfriend" & by the looks of it is enormously wealthy. Danny & David are friends with each other. David, Helen and Danny seem to hang out together for too often. Finding she is also interested in art, they invite Jenny to an art auction. David picks up Jenny at school and they go to the auction, winning a bid for a painting by Edward Burne-Jones and going to Danny's place afterwards. Jenny starts spending a lot of time with this group & her grades start slipping at school. David even manages to convince Jenny's parents to send her away on a weekend trip with him on the pretext of a chance meeting with a famous author Clive Lewis (one of Jenny's favorites who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia) who is currently visiting Oxford. That night David acts as gentleman with Jenny & doesn't force her into sleeping with him, although there is fondling. Jenny then shows a signed copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to her parents (in fact signed by David, as they had never met Lewis). Impressed by David's connections and charisma, Jack and Marjorie approve of their romantic relationship. Later, Jenny discovers that David is a con man who makes money through a variety of shady practices. She is initially shocked but silences her misgivings in the face of David's persuasive charm. Soon, David takes Jenny to Paris as a 17th birthday gift. Jenny's parents invite Graham (Matthew Beard), a boy Jenny knows from Youth Orchestra to Jenny's birthday party, but David arrives, and Graham goes home. David takes Jenny to Paris and that night David and Jenny have sex for the first time. In Paris, the two go sight-seeing, take photos, and go dancing, and Jenny loses her virginity to David. Back in London, Jenny gives her favorite teacher, Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams), Chanel perfume as a gift from her trip, but Miss Stubbs refuses the gift, telling Jenny that she knows where it came from and is both concerned and disapproving of her relationship with David. They argue and have a falling-out. Later that night, David proposes marriage. After talking with her parents, Jenny accepts the proposal, but the news causes an argument with her headmistress Miss Walters (Emma Thompson), and she decides to drop out of school and not pursue a place at university. When David proposes marriage, Jenny accepts and leaves school. All of Jenny's teachers plead with her to continue on her journey to Oxford, but Jenny is exulted with the attention she is getting & accepts David's offer. Her parents aren't the least bit bothered & in fact her dad seems happy that now Jenny will be well looked after & there is no need for her to go to oxford after all. She one night, while David is treating Jenny's family to dinner, Jenny happens to check David's mail & discovers David is already married. Shocked, Jenny tells David to take her and her parents back home. Jenny tearfully argues with David, telling him she gave up her education to be with him. David says he will get a divorce and agrees that he will tell her parents the truth with her, but after she goes inside her house, he drives off and is never seen again. Jenny despairs, and goes to see Danny and Helen, blaming them for not telling her the truth early on. She also blames her parents for encouraging her to throw her life away with an older man. Jenny goes to see David's wife Sarah (Sally Hawkins), who tells her that David is a serial adulterer, and has a son. Later that night, Jack apologizes to Jenny, admitting that he messed up and that he believed David could give her the life she wanted. Jack points out that although David wasn't who he said he was, Jenny had also deceived her parents about David's nature by playing along with some of David's lies to her parents. When Jenny is then refused re-admission to her old school to repeat her last year and take her exams, she goes to Miss Stubbs, apologizing and asking for her help. Miss Stubbs eagerly agrees, and Jenny resumes her studies and is accepted at Oxford the following year. In a closing voiceover, Jenny shares a story about dating boys her age and starting over with fresh eyes, despite her experience with David.

John Laroche (Chris Cooper) and his wife run a successful Florida nursery, but tragedy strikes and Laroche's wife, mother and uncle are involved in a car accident. Laroche's mother and uncle are killed immediately, but his wife goes into a coma, divorcing Laroche and suing him once she regains consciousness. Laroche even lost most of his front teeth in the accident. One month later, Laroche's home and everything he owns is destroyed by Hurricane Andrew. Meanwhile, local Seminoles hire Laroche due to his vast knowledge of flowers and orchid poaching. The Seminole are a Native American people who developed in Florida in the 18th century. However, the Seminoles only use the extract of the Ghost Orchid for illicit drug use, and not for tribal ceremonials as Laroche thought. Laroche had to go deep into the state preserve park, and traverse the swamps, to find the right kind of Orchids. Laroche is caught at the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park and admits that he removed 130 plants from the reserve and most of them are endangered Orchids. Laroche argues with the Park Ranger Tony (Jim Beaver) that the Native Americans are exempt from preservation laws at the reserve. The ensuing trial captures the attention of New Yorker journalist Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep). Susan had researched the topic and knew that many explorers had perished in the jungles in search for exotic Orchids. Susan listens to Laroche's testimony and finds that Laroche is a leading expert on the topic of Orchids. Laroche says that he is the only one in the world who knows how to cultivate a Ghost Orchid. Laroche knew that so long as he did not touch the plant, the state of Florida did not have a case against him. His plan was to make the Orchid easily available in stores, so the poaching of the Preserve could stop. Laroche says that each Orchid has a special relationship with an insect that pollinates it. Laroche and Susan become great friends, with Susan writing The Orchid Thief. Laroche and Susan then become romantically involved, while Susan is still married, albeit unhappily, in New York. The Orchid Thief is then optioned by Columbia Pictures. The self-loathing and agoraphobic Charlie Kaufman (Nicholas Cage) is hired to write the screenplay for The Orchid Thief. Charlie meets Valerie Thomas (Tilda Swinton) for a business meeting Valerie represents Columbia Pictures. Charlie tells Valerie that he does not want to force a plot or a narrative on the movie, and wants to allow it to develop naturally. Valerie says that the studio likes the idea of Orlean and Laroche falling in love. Charlie is going through melancholic depression and is not happy that his twin brother Donald has moved into his house and is mooching off him. Charlie continually imagines what activities would make him happier but is unable to reach a conclusion as he procrastinates about everything. Charlie's mind wanders into all directions at once and as such he is in a constant state of paralysis, always thinking, but not really doing anything about it. He believes that all his anxieties could be a result of chemical imbalances within his body or misfiring Synapses. Charlie was the screenwriter for "Being John Malkovich", but he was ignored on sets. Charlie feels depressed that he is 40 years old, and nobody even knows his name. Donald decides to become a screenwriter like Charlie and attends Robert McKee's famous seminars. Charlie says that anyone pretending to have the answer to everyone's problems would only attract the most desperate of the lot in society. Charlie is anyways nervous as nobody has ever written a movie about flowers till date. Charlie considers this his journey into the unknown world of self-discovery. Charlie occasionally meets his ex-girlfriend Amelia who says that it is a good thing that Charlie picked the Orchid script as he needs work to focus his thoughts. Charlie, who rejects simplistic formulaic script writing, wants to ensure that his script is a faithful adaptation of The Orchid Thief. However, he comes to realize that there is no narrative to the book and that it is impossible to turn into a film, leaving Charlie with a serious case of writer's block. Meanwhile, Donald's script for a cliched psychological thriller, called The 3, sells for six or seven figures, while Charlie accidentally starts writing his script with self-reference. Already well over his deadline with Columbia Pictures, Charlie visits Susan (Meryl Streep) in New York for advice on the screenplay. Unable to face her, Charlie visits McKee's seminar in New York and asks him for advice and then brings Donald to New York to assist with the story structure. Donald pretends to be Charlie and interviews Susan but is suspicious of her account of events because it is too perfect. He and Charlie follow Orlean to Florida, where she meets John Laroche, the orchid-stealing protagonist of her book and her secret lover. It is revealed that the Seminole wanted the ghost orchid to manufacture a mind-altering drug that causes fascination. Laroche introduces the drug to Orlean. After Laroche and Orlean catch Charlie observing them taking the drug and having sex, Orlean decides that Charlie must be killed to prevent him from potentially exposing them. She forces him at gunpoint to drive to the swamp where she will kill him. Charlie and Donald escape and hide in the swamp where they resolve their differences and Charlie's problems with women. Then, Laroche accidentally shoots Donald. Fleeing, Charlie and Donald drive off but crash into a ranger's truck. Donald is ejected through the windshield and dies moments later, but Charlie is saved by the airbag and runs into the swamp to hide. There he is spotted by Laroche, who is killed by an alligator before he can kill Charlie. Susan is arrested. Charlie then makes up with his mother, tells his former love interest, Amelia (Cara Seymour), that he is still in love with her, and finishes the script. She responds that she loves him too. It ends with Charlie in a voice-over announcing the script is finished and that he wants Gérard Depardieu to portray him in the film.

Selma is a young Czech mother living in Washington state in the early 1960s. How she loves musicals! Alas, she is going blind, and this is threatening her job (not to say her limbs) at the local factory, where she is friends with Cathy, who is a bit flummoxed by Selma's increasing workload, which includes pinning hairpins to unbent cardboard as a side job. Selma lives with her understandably ungrateful 12-year-old delinquent son in a mobile trailer on the property of a local sheriff and his happy-go-lucky wife. One day, the sheriff reveals a dark secret to Selma, and being the type to cement friendships, she tells him a secret, too: that she is going blind. Life spirals downard for her after this revelation, but Selma is resolute in protecting her friend's secret. Cathy, who grows increasingly frustrated with Selma's decisions, comes to realize Selma's methodology was right after all, and in the gripping final moments of the film, she tells Selma that she did right. This is a curious, highly depressing, yet exhilarating film (with various experimental camera techniques) about the power of friendship and maternal love -- not to be watched alone!