Dir: Cédric Klapisch, France/Belgium, 2025, 126 mins. in French with subtitles
Cast: Suzanne Lindon, Vassili Schneider, Paul Kircher, Abraham Walper, Julia Piaton
Review by Carol Allen
It is set in two different periods – 1895 and the present – and it demonstrates through the parallel stories that it tells how the past creates the present and indeed is itself still present in those who were created as a result of that past.
Four distant cousins from a large family are brought together by plans for a new supermarket. They are video artist Seb (Abraham Walper); business women Celine (Julia Piaton), who has a good head for business but a rotten love life; Guy (Vincent Macaigne), a rather jolly bee keeper, who is a keen conservationist and devoted teacher Abdelkrim (Zinedine Soualem). The four have been chosen to represent the family in the matter of an old house in the Normandy countryside, which belonged to their ancestor Adele (Suzanne Lindon), The supermarket developers want to demolish the house to make way for a car park but they need the family’s permission.
Back in 1895 21 year old Adele, who has been raised in that house by her now deceased grandmother, sets off for Paris to find her long lost mother. Her story is revealed to the present day family members through the various artefacts in the house, as the film cuts seamlessly and creatively between the two stories, highlighting the differences and the similarities between them. As for instance when today’s characters are on a bridge over the Seine, and the shot changes to that same bridge but as it was in 1895.
Adele’s journey is in sharp contrast to that of her descendants, who travel in high speed trains. The driver of the horse drawn cart that takes her from her home grumbles amusingly about how “young people today” are making life move too fast. The rest of her journey is on a slow river boat, where she meets two brothers – would be painter Lucien (Vassili Schneider) and Anatole (Paul Kircher), who is into the art of photography, still in its infancy. The awed express on the faces of the three young people at their first sight of that then modern miracle of architecture, the Eiffel Tower, is something to behold.
The brothers embody two of many developments we see happening in art and technology at that time. Out of the arrival of photography come the Impressionists, who look at the world and paint it in a different way and are mocked for “not finishing their paintings”! While in the present Adele’s descendants find a painting in the house, which may or may not be a genuine Impressionist masterpiece.
Lucien and Anatole invite Adele to share their room at a humble establishment called Le Rat Mort (The Dead Rat!), where she sleeps modestly behind a sheet they have hung to divide the room. And then she finds her mother Odette (Sara Girauau) and gets to love her and understand why she deserted her baby, as Odette’s story is gradually revealed.
The contrasts and also the similarities between life and attitudes in the two eras is an ongoing thread of the film. It’s beautiful to look at and well acted with interesting three dimensional characters. It is also constantly intriguing, particularly in the way in which, intentionally or not, it subliminally suggests the possibility that the past not only creates the present and indeed the future but that they all exist in some way simultaneously.
Far from being a worthy historical treatise however, it’s also very funny and witty at times.
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