Best movies like Le Meilleur de la Vie

Bahia Benmahmoud, a free-spirited young woman, has a particular way of seeing political engagement, as she doesn't hesitate to sleep with those who don't agree with her to convert them to her cause - which is a lot of people, as all right-leaning people are concerned. Generally, it works pretty well. Until the day she meets Arthur Martin, a discreet forty-something who doesn't like taking risks. She imagines that with a name like that, he's got to be slightly fascist. But names are deceitful and appearances deceiving.

Julie, a woman who is unlucky in love despite her bubbly demeanor. Her job at a bookstore takes an interesting twist when she discovers a book titled "Happiness Can Be Learned," and she sets out to fix her love life once and for all.

A man and woman must face the tension that builds between them during a long-distance relationship.

Mexican beauty Camilla hopes to rise above her station by marrying a wealthy American. That is complicated by meeting Arturo Bandini, a first-generation Italian hoping to land a writing career and a blue-eyed blonde on his arm.

In metahistorical New York city electrotechnician Lafayette deals with a megalomaniac director of a wax museum of ancient Rome, an italian lonely anarchist, a group of feminist actresses - including Angelica who falls in love with him - and a small adopted chimpanzee.

A young woman from the American Midwest, Loïe Fuller became the toast of the Folies Bergère at the turn of the 20th century and an icon of the Belle Epoque. Inventor of the breathtaking Serpentine Dance, she was a pioneer of modern dance and lighting techniques. It was her complicated relationship to her protégé - Isadora Duncan – that precipitated the downfall of this early 20th century icon.

Young lovers in London are wrapped up in a love triangle that may not be exactly what it seems. Carmen, a beautiful Spanish woman with a tendency to lose her temper at the drop of a hat, is about to be married to Barnaby, a caring, wealthy, but slightly boring Englishman. While out with friends on her 'hen night' she encounters a stranger who suddenly sparks a passion that has been sleeping within her. As her wedding date approaches, she finds herself struggling to put this newcomer out of her mind, but his effect on her keeps growing stronger. What is it that he sees in her, and why does she feel like she's being pushed inevitably into his arms?

In 1958 New York Diane Arbus is a housewife and mother who works as an assistant to her husband, a photographer employed by her wealthy parents. Respectable though her life is, she cannot help but feel uncomfortable in her privileged world. One night, a new neighbor catches Diane's eye, and the enigmatic man inspires her to set forth on the path to discovering her own artistry.

Hannah is a recent college graduate interning at a Chicago production company. She is crushing on two writers at work, Matt and Paul, who share an office and keep her entertained. Will a relationship with one of them disrupt the delicate balance of their friendship?

Pomme is a meek and mild French beautician whose life takes a fateful turn during a vacation to Normandy. She becomes the lover of middle-class literature-student François. The relationship sours when François takes her home to meet his parents, thanks in no small part to their differing social backgrounds.

Based on the true story of two chambermaids (the Papin sisters) of 1930s France who murdered their employer and her daughter. Christine Papin and Léa Papin are sisters with an already troubled past. Madame Lancelin takes them into her home and employs the girls as maids. Christine sees in Madame Lancelin an ideal mother figure — in spite of her severity. But their wretched background — an indifferent mother and drunken abusive father — casts a shadow over the girls and over time their ill-fated situation darkens. The sisters withdraw into themselves and finish by committing the worst — killing Madame Lancelin and her daughter after six years of service, on the 2 February 1933 in Le Mans.

Two dramatic stories. In an undetermined past, a young cannibal (who killed his own father) is condemned to be torn to pieces by some wild beasts. In the second story, Julian, the young son of a post-war German industrialist, is on the way to lie down with his farm's pigs, because he doesn't like human relationships.

A woman who was promised to a powerful family's son at birth falls in love with another man, refuses to renounce him, and is sent to a nunnery by her shocked parents. Once there, she first undergoes degradation to acclimatize her to convent life; then she experiences rampant lesbianism by the repressed nuns, and becomes pregnant by her lover. Finally, her refusal to accede to one nun's lascivious lesbian advances leads to plotting and treachery, and her lover being murdered out of jealousy. Her life now ruined, she further scandalises her family by refusing to take her vows, and leaves the convent, devoting her existence to those in need. Claims to be based on a true story!

An acclaimed novelist struggles to write an analysis of love in one of three stories, each set in a different city, that detail the beginning, middle and end of a relationship.

Paul Dedalus is at a crossroads in his life. He has to make several decisions; should he complete his doctorate, does he want to become a full professor, does he really love his long-standing girlfriend, or should he re-start with one of his other lovers?

Set on Halloween, a young astronomer who has unexpectedly lost her job, is poised to make perhaps the first reckless decision of her life.

William is constantly shooting video journals of his life to have as souvenirs for himself. Feeling the end of his relationship with Médéric, his young lover, William spends two days camping with him, taking advantage of the situation by filming the trip and their time spent with another young gay couple. The camera never stops shooting, even when Médéric decides to get it on with another guy in a tent. As Canada's first Dogme95 film, the story is shot on location, with natural lighting and live sound, the camera is hand-held and all superficial elements are forbidden. Yet somehow, in spite of these harsh restrictions during the filmmaking process, the result is warm and beautiful.

As a kid, Leo thought he possessed, like a magician, the secret power to make things happen. As a young man, he certainly knows how to make things happen with women. But as his best friend Krantz would say to him, "Why do you always ask questions you already know answers to?" Leo believes firmly in what he invents from one day to the next. Images, impressions, stories fill his head. That's just how he is: life, for Leo, is just a game. Behind this childlike attitude, hides the very essence of his own life's quest.

A woman, a man, a summer in Paris. Passion, break ups, reconciliations. A love story in disarray...

Psychological drama of the compelling relationship between a young French engineer and the girl he takes into his home after his wife has left him with their baby son.

Paris, 1968. Catherine, Yves and Hervé are twenty years old. They're students and they love each other. The May student uprisings radically change their lives. Overtaken by communal utopia, they leave the city with a few friends to set up house in an abandoned farm in the Lot region. A desire for freedom and the search for individual fulfillment lead them to make choices that cause more harm than good.

Abelard, a famous teacher of philosophy at the cathedral school of Notre Dame, falls in love with one of his students, Héloïse d'Argenteuil. A sixteen-year old girl raised in a convent, Héloïse has an intellectual curiosity and rebels against the status of women in 12th century Europe. When others begin to suspect their relationship, Heloise's uncle Fulbert and the bishop of Paris work together to put a stop to it. Héloïse becomes pregnant with Abelard's child, and they are married in secret. Abelard struggles for acting against the will of God, yet is unable to escape his love for Heloise.

Taunted by visions of Mary Magdalene, who reveals the confessions of the younger nuns at the convent, the Mother Superior's mind is filled with the violent, sexual acts of her fellow sisters.

After an argument and fight with a wealthy one night stand in a posh hotel, young hustler Chris finds himself trapped inside. With nowhere to go and the cops closing in on the hotel fast, he wanders into "Suite 16" in a fit of despair. Inside, a handicapped and wheelchair bound Glover is held captive for the evening once discovered by Chris. However, things change the next day when Glover informs Chris that the woman he slept with is now dead; and that he surely will be sought out for her murder. Lonely and bored, Glover offers to shelter Chris for awhile while the cuts and bruises from the previous nights escapades have time to heal.

A mother of three daughters (one died at the age of three) commits a crime of conscience and becomes radicalized in prison; she turns into an idealist run amok, determined to change her little corner of the world for the better. Her middle daughter, with a physician for a father, an older sister who joins Doctors Without Borders, and a baby sister who dies, is fanatically trying to find a place for herself in this family of overachievers.

Three young housewives, feeling neglected and abandoned after their spouses go off together on their latest hunting trip, try out at an elite brothel run by the glamorous Madam Brittany for kicks and cash. But what begins as a sexy lark takes on greater consequences, and soon becomes a life-changing experience for the sexy trio -- especially once the dark secret shared by their patronizing, inattentive husbands is revealed.

Marie lives with Antoine, but while he is away she meets Paul, a filmmaker visiting from Canada. Paul is instantly smitten and wants her to marry him. She puts him off by saying that she and Antoine have decided to have a baby. When Antoine returns, he becomes vividly jealous of his girlfriend's chaste encounter, which provokes her into having an affair with Paul.

Adrien is a journalist specialised on the "strange". He is asked to interview a man who is said to know succubi. He meets a woman at the cemetery's entrance who offers him a ring which had belonged to Casanova and has magic powers which enable the journalist to make his fantasies come to reality. But he must sell this ring within seven days for fear of a terrible death

A unique exploration into romantic connection and gender dynamics, 'Aviva' tells the story of a relationship between a man and a woman, with each of the two principal characters played by both a man and a woman. It's the story of a marriage that develops and eventually dissolves, evolving into deep friendship-all told through a mix of traditional dramatic scenes and expressive dance sequences

Grieving her mother’s death and her own failing marriage, Lexi boards a plane from London to Los Angeles in search of the estranged father who abandoned her when she was three years old. Based out of a seedy Hollywood motel, she follows a tenuous trail of breadcrumbs, collecting numbers and addresses in the hopes that one will lead to her father, while establishing unexpected connections along the way.

Normande St-Onge works as a clerk in a pharmacy and takes dance classes with the dream of being a cabaret dancer. Her mother, Berthe, has been confined to a mental institution by Normande's uncle, the wealthy lawyer Jean-Paul. But Normande, who does not believe her mother is insane, kidnaps her from the institution and brings her home. Also living with them is Normande's sister Pierette, who has asthma and a drug addiction, Normande's boyfriend Bouliane, who is unemployed and in no hurry to find a job, and a strange young magician named Carol she took in after he was kicked out of his home. All of these people depend on Normande in various ways and exploit her; Normande, desperate to be loved, is driven mad by the demands of her parasite family. When she receives an eviction notice stating that the building will be demolished and rebuilt into a restaurant, it all becomes too much for Normande and her mind retreats into fantasy to protect her from the harsh realities.

Luc travels to Paris for the first time to sit the entrance exam for a carpentry school. There he meets Djemila, a young worker with whom he enjoys a short romance, before returning to his home town and beginning a relationship with Geneviève, whom he has known since childhood. Caught between two passions, Luc runs, resolving to fulfil his father's dreams by devoting himself to his future... until finally, he experiences true love.

A wealthy bourgeois, bored in her immense property, to pass the time engages a gigolo to answer all her wishes, from the most unfulfilled to the most hidden... But when the young man takes an interest in the sister of his boss, the latter becomes very jealous.

When a terminally-ill art historian meets an engineer, it is love and lust at first sight. But their love is threatened by her looming illness. With her remaining days on earth numbered, she chooses to fan the flames of her obsession by taking her lover on a trip to Venice, where the artist's work becomes the background for their physical passion and emotional discovery.

Lovers of perverse games, Axelle, Laure and Pierre trap young women who have just arrived in Paris. But when the charming Isabelle arrives, nothing goes as planned...