Movies with quirky plots

The New York Film Forum is well-known for selecting interesting movies.

But the stories of two particular films stand out for me for being quantum-quirky:

Silent Chrysanthemum, a 1958 Japanese flick directed by Mitsudo Tanaka tells the story of Yukio, a sensitive girl from a small mountain village. She spends her time gazing out from the terrace, dreaming that her father will someday allow her into the living room. While harvesting mud for a dinner party, Yukio meets a stranger who gifts her with an enchanted form-fitted kimono that transforms her into the most beautiful woman in the world--although he warns her not to sit down, lest she cut off circulation to her brain. Hearing of her beauty Samurai come from far and wide to ogle at her. They also make obscene gestures at her with the handles of their swords. Distraught, Yukio renounces love and flees to Hokkaido, where she embarks on a successful career as a bamboo room divider.

I was left imagining as to why Yukio wasn't allowed into her father's living room. The rest I could understand, including the bit about a tight dress that can cut off circulation if stretched to the limit.

A Frolic in the Hay, is a 1956 Swedish film directed by Sven Ingersoll. The film abounds in existential questions like "How is it that the god who created love also created dandruff?" The hero is one banker, Victor Flynderhorst, who is struggling to reconcile his fear of death with his fondness for open mine shafts. He takes his three grown children in a barn, where they become so engrossed with philosophical questions that they fail to appreciate what is right in front of them--specifically, the fact that the barn is on fire. Unable to cope with the contradictions of ontology, Victor goes mad, and he spends the remainder of the film vainly chasing the English subtitles with a butterfly net.

I really like the question posed above--sears the fact of god's ability to create both the abstractedly beautiful and the tangibly common--in an eloquent sentence!

Haven't seen any of these films, so if you ask me how I came to know of the stories, the answer lies here.