Guermantes

In the UK this film is to my knowledge unknown, or avoided. It is a hymn to life during the appalling pandemic that hit the world in 2020. This film shows how a group pf actors who practically live in the theatre where they are rehearing ' Guermantes ' a play based on part of Marcel Proust's ' In Search of Lost Time. ' During two hours and twenty minutes we see them rehearse, relax, sleep and love each other despite the fact that the play could not be put on due to lockdown. Their devotion to each other is incredible to watch, and there is a scene where an elderly woman is dying in bed which surpassed for me a similar scene in Ingmar Bergman's ' Cries and Whispers.' Both homosexuality and heterosexuality intermingle as they should in ' real ' life and at one point there is an astute comparison with the pandemic of the 1980's where so many died of another world wide pandemic. There are scenes of a semi-deserted Paris that for me was heart breaking to see. I urgently feel that this film deserves the distribution it should have beyond the confines of France and perhaps other countries with less indifference to Christophe Honore's work and arguably his most committed film.