Synopsis
Summer in Paris. Three characters in search of themselves. Young Antoine quits his soul-destroying job on a whim. Monsieur Jules goes back to his old neighbourhood to confront his ghosts. As for Natalia, she is obsessed with the fate of Howard Smith, an American inmate on death row, who is soon to be executed. Their destinies will cross, intertwine, and diverge through their encounters with one another—over the course of a single night of wandering, the time of a glance…
Excerpt
Press
For his first fiction film, the seasoned documentarian Ilan Flammer draws on documentary techniques to depict the love story between two lost souls in Paris: Antoine (Mathieu Demy), who has just walked out of a tedious job, and Natalia (Marina Hands), preoccupied with the fate of a death-row inmate across the Atlantic.
He follows them as they wander through the working-class neighborhoods of Paris. As director he lets his key concerns surface, subtly, but never insistently: the loss of a loved one, the passage of time, terrorism and suicide attacks in Israel (“There was no attack in Jerusalem, Baroukh Hashem”), all in a very understated narrative style.
A touching little movie—barely dramatic, but profoundly human. -G.A.
L’Arche
In a timeless Paris by night, two men and a woman cross paths, observe one another, and attempt, if only for a fleeting moment, to draw closer. If the screenplay sometimes lacks daring, the direction captures their solitude and follows their aimless wandering with a sensitivity and a gentle sense of understatement reminiscent of certain New Wave films. Bathed in gentle melancholy and shot from the margins, this documentarian’s first foray into fiction proves disarmingly endearing.
TELE OBS
In the director’s eye, there is a true sense of curiosity, a poetic fondness for all manner of seemingly insignificant things. It unfolds like a stroll scattered with delicate personal notes of a changing Paris, of regrets and hopes, of the yearning to keep yearning. Only an hour long it’s a modest little movie, yet with unmistakable charm.
Télérama
Production
Cabiria Films
Crew
Directed by: Ilan Flammer
Written by: Ilan Flammer
Cinematography: Patrick Jan
Production Design: Antoine Ranson
Sound: Martin Boisseau and Paulin Sagna
Edited by: Lise Beaulieu, Hélène Viard, Christine Marier
Music by: Ami Flammer and Michel Korb
Cast
Mathieu Demy : Antoine
Marina Hands : Natalya
André Wilms : M. Jules
Fanny Cottençon : Mme Agnès
