De l'histoire ancienne

by Orso Miret

2000 Selection

FRANCE 2000 2h00

Feature Film

Olivier, a secondary school teacher, is preparing a doctorate on the history of members of the French resistance shot during the Second World War. His best friend Guy works in a bookshop and provides Olivier with books for his research. But Olivier wants to meet Guy's father who miraculously escaped from a collective execution at the end of the conflict.
The young bookshop assistant procrastinates. The meeting will never take place. The death of the former resistance hero throws the story into chaos.
Fleeing his mourning, Guy is gradually caught up by an imaginary guilt. He soon accuses himself of having erased all traces of his father by accepting to have him incinerated. He returns to his family, obsessed by the idea of paying homage to his deceased father.
At the same time, his sister Danielle and his elder brother Fabien are coping with the pathological mourning of their mother. Guy refuses to listen to them. While wanting to take charge of his father's memory, he decides to take charge of his mother on his own. When she is taken into hospital after an attack, Guy goes back home, overhelmed by his successive failures.
Prey to his increasing madness, he tries to commit suicide by making a mad attempt to blow up a far right book shop.