House of Women - DVD

Brilliant, two-time Oscar-nominated actor Willem Dafoe (The English Patient) stars as an American priest in a foreign land on the brink of revolution. The peril increases as he is drawn into a forbidden liaison with a beautiful aristocrat and soon they are caught in a gathering storm that will not only threaten their love but their lives. Enter an exotic world of danger, temptation, and obsession in this passionate adventure of destiny and desire.

A turn-of-the-century brothel becomes an unlikely bastion of loyalty in House of Pleasures, an erotic feast about the uniquely intimate camaraderie that develops among the ladies of the luxurious French house L'Apollinde. Madam Marie-France provides a glamorous life for some of the most alluring and desirable women in Paris, but also treats them as virtual slaves. Among the dozen employees are a cheerful girl with a regular adoring john, a regal beauty who disdains all the men fighting for her services, a long-legged stunner reaching the end of her career, and a sweet and trusting new girl who winds up in bed with a very rough customer. From the director of the Pornographer, House of Pleasures both exposes the dangers of the S*x trade and manages to show how trust can be earned in the most unlikely of places.

Kay Francis' wide, beautiful eyes were made for reflecting suffering and they do so gallantly in this pre-Code story of the bitter fruits of adultery. Francis stars as couturier Natalie Upton, who finds happiness in the arms of a married man until her kid brother comes to town. He and the daughter of Natalie's lover are engaged and the young couple demand that the scandalous affair end -- now! This is Francis' movie all the way, but at