La palombière

The true story of a nun who betrayed a network of Resistance fighters after having a passionate but doomed love affair with a priest during the Second World War.

Eight-year-old Eva and her mother have a very positive CHILD-TO-CHILD-RELATION. The mother is incapable of mature behaviour when problems arise. When the mother forgets to fetch Eva at school in her car, Eva does not know the way home. Panicking and crying she just runs and is overrun by a car. The driver is obviously innocent. He is a second-hand bookseller (Etienne) and a mountain climber and has a phenomenal memory. The hospital cannot tell whether Eva will ever wake up from her coma, or will speak or move.

Based on the true story of two chambermaids (the Papin sisters) of 1930s France who murdered their employer and her daughter. Christine Papin (Sylvie Testud), and Léa Papin (Julie-Marie Parmentier) are sisters with an already troubled past. Madame Lancelin takes them into her home and employs the girls as maids. Christine sees in Madame Lancelin an ideal mother figure — in spite of her severity. But their wretched background — an indifferent mother and drunken abusive father — casts a shadow over the girls and over time their ill-fated situation darkens. The sisters withdraw into themselves and finish by committing the worst — killing Madame Lancelin and her daughter after six years of service, on the 2 February 1933 in Le Mans.

This effective, straightforward story about the birth and on-going life of a young man at the beginning of the 20th century reflects the political and social history of his time. Adrien (child, Bertrand Sautereau, adult, Serge Dominque) was born in a field to a mother who had lived as a shepherdess. She died when he was born. As he grows up under harsh treatment by his grandfather, World War I and labor unrest simmer and explode in the background. Finally rebelling against his grandfather, Adrien runs away and stays with another family for awhile. But the lure of finding his place in the world continues. He gets a job and eventually falls in love, though nothing in his life comes along easily and some of the biases he experiences have more than social nuances as Europe simmers again on the way to World War II.