Westfield Memorial Library Presents Fall Foreign Film Festival

The Westfield Memorial Library is pleased to present the Fall Foreign Film Festival in October, November and December on three Mondays at 2 and 6:30 p.m. The library is located at 550 East Broad Street.

The festival kicks off on October 15 with “Romantics, Anonymous,” a French film that runs 80 minutes. Jean-Rene (Benoit Poelvoorde, Coco Before Chanel) is the boss of a chocolate factory and Angelique (Isabelle Carre, Private Fears in Public Places) is a talented chocolate maker. They are both emotionally-challenged people. Drawn together through a shared passion for chocolate, Jean-Rene and Angelique fall in love, but neither is able to express how they feel. Sadly, their crippling shyness is driving them apart. But eventually, they manage to overcome their lack of self-confidence, and risk baring their true feelings.

On November 15, the Spanish film “Anita,” which runs 104 minutes, will debut. Anita lives with her mother in the heart of Buenos Aires’ Jewish neighborhood. On July 18, 1994, she helps her mother open the family store holding the fort while her mother runs out on a quick errand to the local Jewish mutual aid society. Suddenly Anita’s life is thrown into turmoil by an event she does not understand. Her bewilderment as she wanders, disoriented, from one end of her city to another, mirrors the incomprehension we all feel in the face of violence and a changed world (sydneylatinofilmfestival.org).

“The Salt of Life,” an Italian film that runs 90 minutes will be shown on December 10. In his warm and witty follow-up to the 2010 hit “Mid-August Lunch,” writer-director-actor Gianni Di Gregorio has created another sparkling comedy with a dash of bittersweet. In The Salt of Life, Gianni plays a middle-aged retiree who has become invisible to all the women of Rome, regardless of age or relation.

He contends with a demanding mother (played by Lunch’s great nonagenarian Valeria de Franciscis); a patronizing wife; a slacker daughter; and a wild party-girl neighbor who uses him... as a dog walker. Watching his codger friends snare beautiful young girlfriends on the sun-kissed cobblestones of Trastevere, Gianni tries his polite, utterly gracious best to generate some kind of extracurricular love life with both hilarious and poignant results.

The movies are free and open to Westfield Memorial Library and MURAL cardholders. (MURAL cardholders belong to libraries that are part of the Middlesex Union Reciprocal Agreement Libraries. Check our website to see if your library participates.) To register for the program, visit the library’s website at www.wmlnj.org , click on the Online Calendar, or call 908.789.4090 option 0.

Founded in 1879, the Westfield Memorial Library—the community’s destination for discovery and ideas—engages minds, entertains spirits and facilitates lifelong learning for people of all ages. Hours are 9:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., Monday through Thursday; 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Friday and Saturday; and 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday.

For more information call 908.789.4090, visit the library’s website at www.wmlnj.org , and sign up for the monthly e-newsletter “Library Loop,” or stop by the library at 550 East Broad Street for a copy of the award-winning quarterly newsletter “Take Note.”