L'attesa

Lou de Laâge,Juliette Binoche

The play is set in Sicily in the year 2005. Few days after the sudden loss of her young son, Giuseppe, Anna receives a phone call from Jeanne, his girlfriend from Paris. Jeanne asks whether Giuseppe is home, thus showing she does not know he died; she announces her arrival in Sicily, where she was supposed to spend her Easter holiday with him. Anna just replies that Giuseppe is not home and that Pietro, the house factotum, will go to the airport to pick her up. Jeanne finally arrives in the night to the countryside villa on Mt. Etna of Giuseppe, where Anna still lives. After having avoided meeting Jeanne for a while, Anna finally gets to know her on the following day. In order to justify both the absence of Giuseppe and the mourning atmosphere of the house, where many relatives and friends dressed in black have showed up to pay a visit, Anna makes up that her brother died shortly ago. Jeanne is sorry for having come on such a tragic moment and proposes to leave back to Paris immediately. Anna, however, invites her to remain in the estate: she is not able to tell her the truth and to let the last 'living part' of her son go. Furthermore, she seems willing to know more about Jeanne and Giuseppe, given that her son was very taciturn:in fact, the only things Anna knows about the young girl are the personal messages she has left on Giuseppe's answering machine after his death. The two women, then, start 'waiting for Giuseppe's return', which is 'expected' on Easter's eve. Thus, they start know one another better, walking in the countryside, having sauna together and visiting the ancient Roman mosaics in Piazza Armerina. While bathing in the lake close to the estate (the theme of the lake, is recurrent in Jeanne's dreams), Jeanne meets two young men, which she invites to the villa for dinner. Anna, Jeanne (who wears Giuseppe's favourite dress) and the two men appear to have a pleasant time, but the dinner is interrupted by the factotum Pietro. Anna joins him in a separate room, where he - not approving Anna's lie and her use of Giuseppe's phone - incites her to disclose the truth to the French girl. The woman, however, prefers to postpone this moment and gives him some days of holiday; before going away, however, Pietro secretly leaves Giuseppe's phone in Jeanne's bedroom. When Anna comes back to the dining room, she finds Jeanne dancing with one of the guest on the notes of Leonard Cohen's "Waiting for the miracle". Anna looks upset and leaves; Jeanne, however, was flirting neither with the dancing guest (who, in fact, had proclaimed himself homosexual during the dinner) nor with the other one, whom she refuses to kiss. The following day is finally Easter's eve. Anna finally tells Jeanne a partial truth: Giuseppe is not going to come back and see her, because he wants to leave her. As a matter of fact, Anna just made up this lie with the few things she had learned on her son's relation: she knew he was jealous, that he had been angry at Jeanne because she had had a sort of flirt with someone else on the previous summer (information Anna got from the messages Jeanne left on Giuseppe's answering machine) and that their relation was undergoing a bad period. Anna tries to comfort Jeanne, ambiguously telling her that she has to let him go forever and that she will start a new life. Jeanne announces that she will leave on the subsequent day. In the night, Anna has a vision that Giuseppe has come home: she talks to him and she imagines joins with him the typical Easter procession of the town; when the statue of mourning Mother Mary (a sculpture which Jeanne had partially seen on her arrival) is unveiled, however, Anna regains consciousness that Giuseppe is gone. Meanwhile, at home, Jeanne finally notices Giuseppe's phone in her room and understands from Anna's personal messages on the answering machine that he is dead. In the morning, Anna enters Jeanne's bedroom to say farewell. Ambiguously, she finally seems to tell her that Giuseppe is dead ('This house will be empty after you leave'), but in turn Jeanne remains silent, not revealing she really knows the truth. The two women hug each other tight, and Jeanne finally leaves.