Stephen Rea

Four women set out on a journey to Lourdes confronting their pasts in search of a miracle.

Kate Beckinsale, star of the first three films (Underworld, Underworld: Evolution, Rise of the Lyncans), returns in her lead role as the vampire warrioress Selene, who escapes imprisonment to find herself in a world where humans have discovered the existence of both Vampire and Lycan clans, and are conducting an all-out war to eradicate both immortal species.

A shadowy freedom fighter known only as V uses guerrilla tactics to fight against his terrorist, totalitarian society. Upon rescuing a girl from the secret police, he also finds his best chance at having an ally.

Novelist Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) is writing "This is a diary of hate" as he starts a new book as well as the film's narration. It's 1946 when Bendrix has a chance meeting one rainy night in London with Henry Miles (Stephen Rea), husband of his former mistress Sarah (Julianne Moore). Two years before, she had abruptly ended their affair for reasons revealed later. Henry suspects Sarah is currently having an affair and is considering employing a private eye to investigate. Bendrix was jealous of Henry during his affair with Sarah and had tried to persuade her to leave him. If she has since started an affair with someone new after telling him there would never be anyone else, Bendrix wants to find out. Without telling Henry, he hires the investigator himself, at the same time as making arrangements to meet Sarah. Consistent with the tone of his diary, their meeting is cold and promises no future. Events are shown from Bendrix perspective, with contrasting flashbacks of Bendrix with Sarah as they began their affair during World War II. The present day action continues as Bendrix encounters the private investigator Parkis (Ian Hart), who uses his young son Lancelot (Sam Bould) to help him snoop. The boy has a birthmark that disfigures his face. Parkis reports that he has found who Sarah has been seeing under the pretence of attending dental appointments. Bendrix jealousy leads him to confront the man named Smythe, using Lancelot as a ploy to gain access to his home. Smythe (Jason Isaacs) is a priest who admits he knows Sarah and who Bendrix is. Smythe is affronted by the way he has approached him and tells him to leave. The climax of Act 2 is a night of passion during the war when we witness them making love amid the sound of V2 rockets falling and shaking the house. Bendrix gets out of bed to check on his landlady and is blown down the stairs by the blast from a rocket hitting the house. When he recovers consciousness, he goes back upstairs to find Sarah praying. Seeing him, she is shocked that he is alive. Bendrix detects that her attitude has changed and accuses Sarah of being disappointed that he survived. She leaves telling him "Love doesn't end, just because we don't see each other." Back to 1946 and Parkis inveigles his way into a social function at the Miles house and steals Sarah's diary which he gives to Bendrix. As he sits to read it, the film sequences of the main events in their relationship are reshown but the narrative is from Sarah's perspective. After Bendrix is hurt by the bomb, Sarah runs downstairs and finds him motionless with no pulse. Assuming him dead, she runs back upstairs and begins to pray for a miracle. Just as she makes a promise to God that she will stop seeing Bendrix if he is brought back to life, Bendrix comes into the room. Now knowing why Sarah ended the affair, Bendrix follows Sarah and begs her to reconsider. Sarah tells Bendrix that she has felt dead without him and can no longer keep her "promise" to God. They rekindle the affair. Bendrix tries to persuade Sarah to leave Henry and confesses to Henry that he hired Parkis to find out who she was seeing while making fake visits to the dentist. Henry is furious and burns the evidence Bendrix produces about Smythe. Henry also desperately asks Sarah not to leave him. Bendrix is visited one night by Henry as he and Sarah are in bed. He does not open the door. She agrees to go away with him the following morning to Brighton where Bendrix finds Parkis is following him. To increase the likelihood of divorce, Bendrix contrives to kiss Sarah in view of their hotel bedroom window where Parkis can photograph them. Bendrix believes his goal has been realised when Henry appears in Brighton. But Henry's reason is not to confront the adulterous couple. It is to tell them what he had come to Bendrix' house for the night previously, that Sarah has a terminal illness and will not survive much longer than the duration of a divorce. Bendrix stays with Henry and Sarah during her final days. Bendrix does not permit Smythe entry when he tries to visit Sarah, telling her it was just a person, and not the postman. When she dies, Smythe visits to offer spiritual support but evokes anger from Bendrix who blames God for taking her. It becomes clear the object of hate in his book is not Sarah or Henry but God. "I hated You as though You existed. Now I am tired of hating...but You're still there". At Sarah's funeral, Parkis tells Bendrix that after finding his son Lancelot asleep in a doorway while he was supposed to be recording her visits to Smythe, she had kissed his birthmarked cheek as she put him on a train home. When the birthmark disappeared, Lancelot believed she had worked a healing miracle on him. At Henry and Sarah's house, Bendrix continues to talk to God whose existence and virtue he had earlier doubted, completing his book with the lines.. "I've only one prayer left. Dear God, forget about me. Look after her and Henry".

"History teaches us that men behave wisely . . . once they've exhausted all other alternatives. For most rock bands, the pursuit of wisdom's a low priority compared to fame, fortune and fornication. Such a band was Strange Fruit." Thus begins the opening dialog of Hughie, (Billy Connolly) as he launches into a brief history of the British band: in the late 1970's Strange Fruit, consisting of guitarist Brian Lovell (Bruce Robinson), his brother and lead singer Keith, keyboard player Tony Costello (Stephen Rea), bassist Les Wickes (Jimmy Nail) and drummer Beano Baggot (Timothy Spall) were HUGE. When Keith died of a drug overdose, he was replaced on vocals by Ray Simms (Bill Nighy). Watched over by road-dog Hughie and Girl Friday Karen (Juliet Aubrey), they soldiered on until the disastrous appearance at the open-air Wisbech (U.K.) Rock Festival, when lightning struck the stage during their opening number. The already-contentious band members decided it was a sign and immediately broke up forever (all this in the first five minutes of the film). Forever, that is, until in the present (OK, 1998) Tony is spotted on Ibeza (he now stocks condoms in the restrooms at the resorts there) by the son of the Wisbech promoter, who wants to put together a 20th anniversary reunion concert with all the original acts. Tony seeks out Karen, now a divorced mother who coordinates conferences for a major hotel, suggesting a possible reunion. She is ambivalent, as is Les (now a successful roofer with a family) and Ray (a struggling solo artist with a demanding second wife -- Swedish -- and a mansion he can't afford). Beano, working in a floral nursery and hounded by the Inland Revenue (the U.K.'s IRS) is the only immediately enthusiastic bandmate. They arrange a meeting, where Karen informs them that she's tracked Brian and found his music royalties are being distributed per a bequest in his will, provoking Beano to compassionately ask if that means "the silly sod's dead?" The band again soldiers on. Hughie shows up to complete what's left of the original entourage and the band begins to practice. It becomes obvious that, beyond the normal clash of rock and roll egos, the biggest problem is Les's extreme resentment of Ray, who not only replaced one-half of a near-genius song-writing duo (the Lovell brothers) but who also refused to let Les sing even though Les considers himself a better singer than Ray (especially when it comes to a certain ballad called "The Flame Still Burns", heard briefly and only acoustically during the middle parts of the film). Karen, now the band's manager, recruits a young guitarist named Luke (Hans Matheson) to replace Brian and besides, she tells the mid-lifers, "he makes you look younger." She also tries to secure a record deal, citing the popularity of the nostalgia wave. She doesn't get it, but she does get financing for a continental European tour, to see what they've got. The band and entourage, along with Karen's daughter Clare (Rachael Stirling), ostensibly there to do the washing, etc. but really there so Karen can keep an eye on her, head across the channel and have some disastrous first concerts while slowly getting their groove back. Many humorous situations unfold during this tour, as when (for just one example) Ray, in a Dutch village, attends what he thinks is an AA meeting only to find that it's an Overeaters Anonymous gathering. The band slowly get better and better and even score a record deal before a confrontation between band members and their egos blows it all up. All seems lost until, just by luck (and a visit to a graveyard) Karen finds out that Brian Lovell isn't dead after all, but a voluntary patient at a mental health facility. She and Tony visit him and convince him to join the band. This is hard on Tony, because he's always had a thing for Karen, who's always had a thing for Brian. The band is reunited and ready to play the Wisbech reunion until the press badger Brian about his former drug use and present mental fragility. He bails and the band is set to go on without him. As they take the stage to perform the same song that they were to sing at the original Wisbech, a microphone feedback reminds Ray of the lightning strike and he freezes. To save the situation, Tony begins to play "The Flame Still Burns". Ray relinquishes the vocals to a stunned Les. Suddenly, Brian shows up in time to take the guitar solo, and the movie ends with the final strains of this song, with all of them singing. As the end titles begin to scroll, Hughie asks, "and how will the Fruits conspire to bollocks things up this time around? We wait with bated breath!"

Paris, Fashion Week 1994. All kind of models, designers, reporters, fashion editors... join together to present next year's trends. Kitty Potter (Kim Basinger) is an American reporter from Atlanta, Georgia who is in search of big news. Sergio (Marcello Mastroianni), an Italian expedite living in Moscow, Russia, arrives in Paris and sends an identical Christian Dior neck tie to the president of the French Association of Fashion, Olivier de la Fontaine (Jean-Pierre Cassel) and meets with him in high secrecy. He disregards his wife Isabella de la Fontaine (Sophia Loren), who is mad at him and tries to avoid Kitty in the airport, but she sees him so he has to give the interview. They have a sandwich and then Sergio and Olivier leave the airport. Sergio doesn't realize that he is carrying Joe Flynn's (Tim Robbins) suitcase. Nearby, scruffy American journalist Anne Eisenhower (Julia Roberts) has lost her suitcase and she can't understand or speak any French, so she takes Sergio's luggage by mistake. While Sergio and Olivier are together in a limo, the president dies while they are stuck in a traffic jam and Sergio runs away. When the chauffeur realizes that his passenger is dead, he cries for help, and Sergio jumps from a bridge so that a police officer doesn't catch him. Cy Bianco (Forest Whitaker) is an eccentric fashion designer who is always changing his mind about his designs. Milo O'Brannigan (Stephen Rea) is a photo journalist from Ireland covering Fashion Week. He is established as is a lazy, I-can't-be-bothered rock-'n'-roller who takes a photo of all the designers together, including Sonya Rykel (herself), and Jean-Paul Gualtier (himself). Meanwhile, Isabella goes to the Richard Lacroix fashion show as if nothing had happened. After the show, where Christy Turlington (herself), Tatjana Patitz (herself), Naomi Campbell (herself), Helena Christensen (herself) and other models strut their stuff, Kitty will interview Gianfranco Ferré (himself), at the time head designer for haute couture house Christian Dior (himself). At the hotel, Anne tries to contact people in the world of fashion without much success. As she and Joe share a luxurious hotel room, and she can't stand drinking, they end up making love. The next morning, she gets angry because he jumped to the occasion, leaving it as a one-night stand when she mentions it. Watching the televised Issey Miyake show, Sergio sees Joe wearing his jacket. Kitty interviews Miyake (himself) as well. Investigating Olivier's death, Paris Metro Police Inspector Tantpis (Jean Rochefort) and Inspector Forget (Michel Blanc) say that it's going to be easy to find who killed Olivier, as everybody hated him. Meanwhile, Sergio moves from one fashion show to the other. He is always among the crowd, always in search of Isabella. When he finally approaches her, Isabella faints, with Kitty crying, "She's not dead! She's not dead!" again and again. Fiona Ulrich (Lili Taylor) is an American photojournalist who interviews various designers. Regina Krumm (Linda Hunt) is the editor-in-chief of Elle magazine who wants to sign Milo. He asks her to go to her knees and beg. When she complies, he photographs her, so she dismisses him while calling him names. He laughs all the way. Later, as a freelance photographer, Milo makes an editorial advertisement for LO footwear, with Linda Evangelista (herself), Carla Bruni (herself), Kristen Fick (herself), Adriana Karembeu (herself), and Greta Cavazzoni (herself). Milo will do the same trick, this time photographing American reporter Sissy Wanamaker (Sally Kellerman) who offered him sex and also wants him to sign for an important position. Nina Scant (Tracey Ullman) is a reporter from the British Vogue who falls victim to Milo in the same way as she is promised sex in exchange for a cover story. Sergio, aka Sergei, finally finds Isabella at a dinner party where Kitty is interviewing Cher (herself). It is revealed here that Sergei and Isabella were lovers when they were younger back in Italy, but as they belonged to a Communist party, he left after their wedding night. He is saying that he still loves her, when they are interrupted by somebody offering her sympathies as a recently widow. They will meet the following day at 16:00 hours at Le Pensevr's statue. Although he is married to a woman, Cy has a gay lover and they share a joint outside at night. At the hotel, Sergio gets Joe Flynn's copy key, posing as Flynn. Cy does his fashion show on an underground Paris Metro train. Two models fight. Pilar (Rossy de Palma) works for famous French designer Simone Lowenthal (Anouk Aimée), who has problems with Jack Lowenthal (Rupert Everett) because they and the company are bankrupt. Slim Chrysler (Lauren Bacall) is another American designer who is on the payroll of Clint Lammeraux (Lyle Lovett), a Texan investor who worries about his own future. Cy and his lover meet their partners, who are also cheating on one another. While they are about to fight, Kitty appears and interviews them. Major Hamilton (Danny Aiello) and his wife Louise (Teri Garr) are an American couple on vacation in Paris who decide to attend the fashion shows, while Louise takes her free time to shop in the various expensive shops. She purchases a large quantity of lingerie, for both herself... and her husband who is later revealed to be a cross-dresser. When Nina, Sissy, and Regina all learn from each other that they were victims of Milo's scam, they turns the tables on their tormentor by stealing his camera and offer to negotiate the return of his incriminating camera in exchange for him telling him his story. Isabella and Sergio go to bed, but after her striptease, he falls sleep, so she leaves in frustration. Simone makes the last preparations for her fashion show, wherein the models, including Yvette Horner (herself) wear cowboy boots... and nothing else. Simone for LO presents a catwalk of nude models to the music of The Cranberries' Pretty. First confused and then fed up, Kitty leaves, giving her microphone to her long-suffering French assistant Sophie Choiset (Chiara Mastroianni), who gladly takes the position in front of the camera. The inspectors say that Olivier died because of the ham sandwich he ate, which got stuck in his esophagus, so he choked to death. Anne and Joe say goodbye as they both prepare to return to the USA, both better dressed this time and they agree to keep their several night stand a secret between the two of them. Over the end credits, Olivier's funeral is held. We see some naked children playing, following the new fashion of Simone, the trend of appreciating the human body and showing it without ornaments. Sergio has fallen asleep again, so he's not in time to talk to Isabella, who dresses in black. The film ends with images of several catwalks.