Plot Synopsis
This complex French tale eschews a single linear narrative in favor of two parallel storylines that move freely between past and present, reality and fantasy, to chronicle a scandalous love affair between a female author and a certain man who may or may not be a fabrication and the attempts of a screenwriter, wanting to use the story for a film, to learn the truth.Read More »
Synopsis:
The story of a woman’s love for two young men. Antwerp, 1940. Lieve marries Adriaan, a Flemish idealist who is drawn towards Germany by the occupation to the Eastern Front. She shelters the resistant François in 1942 and discovers with him what love is really about. At the liberation, she’s reunited with a bruised and sentenced Adriaan. In spite of her passion for François, she cannot bring herself to abandon him in these trying circumstances. But she slowly drifts away from her husband, while she senses that François, who is monopolized by his career, is slowly drifting away from her.Read More »
Mathieu returns home. He tells no one of his encounter with the strange woman. He goes back to his studious but airless life in the archives of a provincial town, cataloging several centuries of births, marriages and deaths. Days later, he goes back to the farmhouse in the woods only to discover the mysterious woman lying in an upstairs room deliriously ill. He recklessly rushes back into town and returns with medicine and food. She recovers. Emboldened by his restorative powers, Mathieu teaches her his name and, realizing she doesn’t comprehend him, he calls her “Belle.”Read More »