The Green Room

Nathalie Baye,François Truffaut

It's a decade after the conclusion of WWI in a French provincial town. A largely private and secretive man, Julien Davenne is surrounded by death in his life, whether it be the thoughts of his fallen comrades in the war while he came out without a scratch, or the virtuosity with which he writes about the dead in his job as a journalist at the Globe newspaper. But arguably the biggest effect of death in his life is the passing of his wife Julie Davenne shortly after they got married after the war. To preserve not so much her memory but her place in his life, he has created a shrine to Julie in a room in the house he shares with Mme. Rambaud, his housekeeper, and her young deaf charge, Georges. The place of not only Julie but others that have meant something to him in combination with the betrayal he has felt by the living, most specifically his childhood best friend, public figure Paul Massigny, has led to Julien having a greater affinity to the dead than to the living, those passed who have meant something to him who he believes he cannot replace not only in them as people but their specific place in his life. As such, he will never remarry. Out of circumstance, he embarks on creating a space for all those that have passed that have meant something to him, that space including a lit candle for each and every one never to be extinguished to represent they still being alive to him. He believes he has found a like-minded soul in reconnecting with Cecilia Mandel, the daughter of a long deceased acquaintance, she who he hopes will maintain this shrine with him. The singularity in his focus against anything outside this very narrow view may tear him and Cecilia apart despite what they mean to each other in life.—Huggo