An Aesop filmography: movies to stir the imagination 

From the formulation of certain products to the design of several stores, film is a medium that has influenced Aesop from the very beginning. Drawing on the expertise of in-house cinephiles past and present, the below list includes movies that have helped shape our creative outlook for the past 37 years. Best paired with a generous amount of popcorn—munched on with the appropriate amount of discretion—may these titles provide tranquil moments of inspiration during the frantic festive period.  

La Chimera, 2023  

Director: Alice Rohrwacher  

In Alice Rohrwacher’s darkly whimsical 1980s period drama, a band of looters unearth glimmering antiques and stories from Tuscany’s past. Shot on a variety of film stocks, every frame has an earthy, organic quality to it; but what makes the film so memorable are the performances, especially Isabella Rossellini as the troupe’s matriarch.  

The Spirit of the Beehive, 1973   

Director: Victor Erice   

When a travelling movie show arrives in a small Spanish village in 1940, six-year-old Ana becomes bewitched by a screening of Frankenstein—and develops an obsession with the monster’s tragic story. One of the great films about childhood, The Spirit of the Beehive is also a meditation on the power of the cinema. 

The Scent of Green Papaya, 1993   

Director: Tran Anh Hung   

This masterwork of a debut is full of elevated everyday moments: the serving of food, the touch of water, the sounds of insects. All these details help to create a deeply sensorial world, one that almost transcends the medium. It makes the story of Mùi, a young servant in 1950s Saigon, feel all the more vivid.  

Unknown Pleasures, 2002   

Director: Jia Zhangke    

The title refers to what all the characters in Jia Zhangke’s bleakly funny film are searching for. These are teenagers recognisable the world over, yet the alienated youth in Unknown Pleasures are specific to one provincial Chinese city at the dawn of this century. Viewed today, even the early digital cinematography feels perfectly judged.  

The Eight Mountains, 2022   

Directors: Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch   

Two childhood friends, Bruno and Pietro, rekindle their lost relationship by building an Alpine hut together one summer—until jealousies begin to intrude upon this idyll. Heightened—emotionally and visually—by its mountainous setting, the film achieves a feeling of great intimacy within a vast landscape.  

2046, 2004   

Director: Wong Kar Wai   

In this semi-sequel to In the Mood for Love, a myriad of story arcs tangle together, causing—or rather allowing—the viewer to become positively lost. Some stories take place in a neon future, others in the 1960s. What holds them together is one location, the titular room 2046, and a rich, almost dizzying visual style.  

Monos, 2019   

Director: Alejandro Landes  

Featuring a haunting score by Mica Levi, known for her work on Under the Skin, Monos is a disturbing, almost hallucinatory film about teenage mercenaries in South America. Comparisons with Lord of the Flies are inevitable, but Colombian-Ecuadorian director Alejandro Landes’ depiction of young lives corrupted by violence is unique.  

I Am Love, 2009   

Director: Luca Guadagnino   

Before garnering even wider accolades for Call Me by Your Name—and helping to design the interiors of Aesop stores in Rome and London—Guadagnino directed this richly sensorial saga, set in the milieu of an upper-class Milanese family. The music of John Adams elevates this expansive opus into something approaching grand Italian opera.  

The Adventure, 1960   

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni   

Starkly beautiful in a way that seems peculiar to Antonioni’s films, The Adventure is full of wide, empty landscapes in which the characters become lost—some of them literally. In this story of isolation and detachment, human lives are imbued with an inescapable sense of ennui—and the camera feels blissfully, ruthlessly indifferent to their fate.  

The Great Beauty, 2013   

Director: Paolo Sorrentino  

With satirical humour as sharp as the suits worn by Sorrentino’s protagonist Jep, this film merges existential musings with brilliantly absurdist set pieces—not least the opening party scene, set high above the bustle of Rome. Despite the biting wit and touches of the surreal, there is a lingering tenderness that resonates far beyond the insular world of Jep and his social milieu.   

Perfect Days, 2024   

Director: Wim Wenders  

An ode to the quiet joys of life, explored through the daily routine of a Tokyo public-toilet cleaner. While acknowledging the fact that life is rarely ‘perfect’, the story focuses on evergreen sources of comfort and beauty—light falling through the trees, surprising acts of kindness, or a song that perfectly scores the mood of the day.   

Faces Places, 2017   

Director: Agnès Varda and JR  

Agnès Varda had always been drawn to documentary, and even her narrative films used non-professional actors to lend a feeling of reportage. In Faces Places, her penultimate film, she embarks on an odyssey through France with the photographer and street artist JR—but it is far from the conventional road trip the conceit would suggest.  

Paris Is Burning, 1990   

Director: Jennie Livingston   

Chronicling the diverse Ballroom culture of 1980s New York, this landmark documentary explores the intersections of queer and racial identities as defiant bodies vogue, duckwalk and dip their way towards a community rooted in acceptance—and a fondness for cutting jibes. To paraphrase the oft-repeated declaration: watching is fundamental.  

Beau Travail, 1999   

Director: Claire Denis   

Set in contemporary Djibouti, Claire Denis’s loose reimagining of Herman Melville’s novella ‘Billy Budd’ works almost as a dance. Against arid rocks and unbroken skies, the soldiers of the French Foreign Legion exercise to the murmuring choruses of Benjamin Britten’s eponymous opera. Dialogue is sparse. Movement feels heightened. The effect is hypnotic.