A boys' night out: men having fun on their own*

“Bruno, I've spent the best two days of my life with you… I mean it!”

– Roberto Mariani

Serious law student Roberto (Jean-Louis Trintignant) goes on an accidental road trip with bon vivant Bruno (Vittorio Gassman).

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.

 

“On the night of July 25, 1958 I killed Ladislaw Zukarevitch, antique dealer, my mentor, my master in the art of polishing diamonds, my tutor at Warsaw Theological School.”

– the student

 

“It calls back a time when there were flowers all over the Earth… and there were valleys. And there were plains of tall green grass that you could lie down in – you could go to sleep in. And there were blue skies, and there was fresh air… and there were things growing all over the place, not just in some domed enclosures blasted some millions of miles out in to space.”

– Freeman Lowell

Someone goes to a spa, beach, or retreat*

“There’s something almost poetic about finding a hairpin in the bath. It’s like the sole of my foot has been pierced by poetry.”

– Nanmura, via

Relaxing at an onsen, a young man steps on the titular kanzashi. Now injured with too much time on his hands, he and his fellow nosy patrons start speculating about its owner. Then a telegram announces her arrival.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.

Someone is in an ambulance or hospital*

“We still remember our high wall. Even the day we first climbed it, filled with curiosity. The sadness of the discoveries of those years seemed devastating to us. Then we wondered how we could have forgotten it so suddenly.”

– prologue

It's summer in Prague. Jitka, a girl on the cusp of womanhood, follows a stray cat and finds a tall hospital wall. Behind it, a young man in a wheelchair rests. The girl and the man connect.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.

Everything's expensive: someone is a at bank or ATM*

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.

A character pigging out*

“The most revolting film I have ever seen”

– Mary Whitehouse, via

Four hedonistic gourmands throw a party of the flesh, of meat, of lust, and death.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.