Céleste Albaret, born in 1881 in provincial France moved to Paris in 1913. At the suggestion of her husband, a taxi driver that counted Marcel Proust among his clients, Céleste began to run errands for the writer and eventually became his live-in housekeeper and later his secretary. Her job was no sinecure; as a housekeeper she had to adapt to Proust's nocturnal habits, and her secretarial duties included sorting and pasting loose manuscript pages so that they were ready for the publisher. She also managed Proust's dwindling social life. Later, as the writer's health deteriorated, she also took dictation. Céleste was present in Proust's cork-lined bedroom when he died in 1922. There are elements of Céleste in some Proust characters like the housekeeper Françoise.
Céleste was fiercely loyal to Proust's memory and never tried to cash in on her privileged knowledge. Almost fifty years later she was rediscovered by the literary establishment and persuaded to put her remembrances in writing. She accepted, her main motivation being that others had written about Proust not always truthfully, and she wanted to set the record straight. She had many taping sessions with journalist Georges Belmont and the result was the book Monsieur Proust, published in 1973.
Director Percy Adlon's job of making a film out of this work is not an easy one, since there is scarce action, and everything happens inside Proust's flat except for shots of the seaside Grand-Hôtel in Cabourg (inspiration for the fictional Balbec) and of the hazy light over the water that figures prominently in Proust's writing. Adlon rises to the challenge; the movie is slow and deliberate but nowhere boring and there is no hint of filmed theater. He is supported by outstanding cinematography, excellent acting (especially by Eva Mattes, playing the protagonist) and a flawless recreation of time and place. A superior movie.
