Original subtitles

- I told you that you had to see.

That around noon the silence over Athens is such...

with the growing heat...

The city empties at the time of the siesta,

just as closed as it is at night.

You had to witness the rise of silence.

I remember, I told you:

Gradually one wonders what is happening,

this disappearance of sound

with the rise of the sun...

That's where this fear comes in.

Not the one of the night,

but a fear of the night in the light.

The silence of the night in the sunlight.

The sun at its zenith and the silence of the night.

The sun at the centre of the sky

and the silence of the night.

When the others arrived, at about two in the afternoon,

we went back down to the city together,

Athens,

and then nothing happened.

Nothing.

Nothing more than ever,

everywhere,

this lack

of loving.

- At the Civic Museum of Athens,

the next afternoon...

- Yes... indeed...

I had forgotten...

typical...

...and then I told you about the "other story",

The story of other people...

It is a Saturday.

At night.

In spring.

It is almost the beginning of summer.

In June.

He, the man in the film,

he works.

He is on duty in a telecommunications department.

He is bored.

Paris is empty.

Spring.

A Saturday.

He is twenty-five years old.

Alone.

He has some numbers from the phone bank. He dials them.

Two of them.

Three of them.

And then, here it is.

Here it is.

The year is 1973.

He kept a diary at that time of his life

and he says he has noted many things.

But then not.

He stopped.

Shortly after it started,

it,

the story,

the love story.

An imageless story.

A black image.

A story of black images.

This is it,

it begins.

She calls at the same time as he does in space and time.

They talk to each other.

Talk.

- They describe themselves.

She claims to be a young woman with black hair.

Long.

- He says he is a young man,

blonde,

with very blue eyes,

tall, almost skinny,

handsome.

She talks to him about what she does.

First, she says she works in a factory.

And then another time...

she says she has just returned from China.

She tells him about her trip to China.

- Another time...

she says she is studying medicine,

in order to join the Doctors Without Borders corps.

- And then, no,

her story no longer changes.

It would appear that she has stuck to the latest version,

that she was finishing her medical studies in a Parisian hospital.

- He says she speaks very well.

With ease.

That you cannot evade listening to her.

Believing her.

- He gives her his phone number.

She does not,

she does not give hers away.

- No,

She did not.

- A month goes by.

It's in those days that she names herself.

She decides on a name that he should call her by,

which begins with the letter

F.

- He says

that she has a voice one likes to listen to.

He says: rather bewitching.

They talk.

Tirelessly.

Talk.

- They talk endlessly.

Endlessly they describe themselves.

One another.

To one,

the other.

They say the colour of the eyes.

The texture of the skin.

The smoothness of the breast

that fits in the hand.

The softness of this hand.

At this very moment

where she tells him about it,

she looks at it.

I look at myself

with your eyes.

- He says he sees.

Describes himself in turn.

He says he follows his own hand

on his own body.

Says:

this is the first time...

There is a pleasure in being alone,

that it provides.

He puts the phone on his heart.

Can she hear?

- She does.

- He says that his whole body

beats to the sound of her voice.

- She says she knows.

That she sees it.

Hears it,

eyes shut

- He says:

I was another to myself

and ignored it.

- She says

she did not know

before him

to be desirable

from a desire of herself

that she herself

could share.

She says it's frightening.

- Did the story happen?

- Someone said they had actually experienced it.

And then it was told.

And then drafted.

And then it was written.

- It is at night that she calls.

- Yes, she calls, with the night.

- As the night falls, she emerges.

"It's me, F. I'm scared."

- The conversations become very long.

Nights.

They last eight hours, or up to ten hours straight.

Eventually they last until dawn.

- He still doesn't know her name,

nor her address,

or telephone number.

He only knows this name

by which she calls herself

when he picks up the phone:

"It's me,

F.

I'm scared."

- He is at her disposal.

He is the one waiting for the phone calls.

He has no way of reaching her himself.

No indication of where she calls him from.

- He doesn't ask for it.

This goes on for months.

Once... she'll tell him some things.

- One time, she tells him:

the place, it's Neuilly.

The place where I stand is this,

Neuilly.

A private hotel.

Between the Seine

and the woods.

- Endless, Neuilly is around her...

- Around the black image...

- Endless... Neuilly around her.

- Around the black image...

- For nights and nights

they each live their lives on the phone.

Talk.

Then, quiet.

Sleeping on the receiver.

Enjoy each other.

- It is an orgasm in the dark.

Without mutual touch.

Faceless.

Eyes closed.

Your voice,

only your voice.

The text of the voices

speak with closed eyes.

- On the text of desire, there is no image?

- Which one?

- I don't see it.

- So, there is nothing to see.

- Nothing.

No image.

The Night Ship is facing the night of time.

- Blind.

On the sea of black ink.

It moves forward.

The Night Ship

has just entered

its story.

It is she

who first wants to see him,

to meet him.

She gives him two kinds of appointments.

Those that are cancelled...

those that she doesn't cancel.

He goes to all of the appointments.

Each time

there are unforeseen circumstances

that prevent the meeting.

- He is not frustrated that the meetings never happen.

He believes it is possible,

each time.

- He believes what she says.

He believes her.

- Very quickly, he can do nothing to reroute the story.

It is her, 'F,' who leads the story.

He stands up to her.

- That prevents the foolish actions.

That makes them

both get used to each other

little by little.

She, she knows nothing.

She invents.

She is...

the first... to go crazy.

- Months pass.

One year.

- Three years.

- The story digs itself into caves,

deepens.

The more it grows,

the darker it becomes.

- One day she tells him:

she is ill.

Leukaemia.

She will die from it.

Kept alive solely by care,

paid for by money,

for ten years,

since she was sixteen.

She is now twenty-six years old.

- Around her,

the dirty Seine.

- And the woods.

This sad setting...

suffering...

from death.

She says they will never meet.

That they will never see each other.

- She says, she loves him to death.

That she is madly in love with him.

That she is ready to leave everything

for him.

- Out of love for you,

I would leave my family,

this house in Neuilly.

Everything.

But this does not mean that it is necessary

that we see each other.

I could leave everything for you

without

joining you.

Leaving because of you,

for you,

and not joining anything.

To create this fidelity...

to our love.

The night,

insomnia,

is the sea over which it passes...

This film.

This drift,

which has been called...

The Night Ship.

It does not exist during the day.

Nothing.

Nothing during the day.

The movements of the Night Ship

give rise to other movements

that would occur elsewhere

and which would be of a different nature.

The movements of the Night Ship

align with the movements of desire.

- He insists.

He wants to see.

Because the idea of seeing

is becoming more and more frightening...

he wants to see.

A way to liquidate the story,

to put an end to it.

- They both know that

the distance is no longer measurable from now on...

between this one

who cries at night,

assimilated into the general desire,

the one disfigured from the abyss...

and the other one.

Who would she be?

That he would not recognise in seeing.

That he could only recognise with his eyes closed...

in the darkness of the world, the night.

- He does not promise to close his eyes as she approaches,

when it would appear decent

covered with a white Chanel

on the corner of a street in Neuilly.

No...

he didn't promise not to look.

- She gives in.

- It was Paris...

in July 1973.

- It was a very hot day.

The date should take place in a café on the Place de la Bastille

at three in the afternoon.

- He waits for her,

he says

for an hour and a half.

Probably even longer.

She does not come.

In the evening, she phones.

She says she went to their date.

That she saw him.

- That he was wearing a summer shirt...

light.

She says the color appeared...

transparent.

She says she couldn't stop.

- He saw nothing pass him by

that looks like her black image,

the one

given by her

on the first day.

She drove past him.

Behind her...

her father's chauffeur was following her,

This was on the orders of his father.

This is what she will say.

She had obtained from her father..

to be allowed to see him...

on condition that she doesn't stop there.

- From now on, she cannot ignore,

forget, this man she saw,

who was waiting for this woman,

her.

His body seen through the transparency of his shirt,

while she drove by,

this black trace of his nipples

on his thin chest

through the transparency of the shirt

filled her with madness.

She saw it

for just a few seconds.

But the image is with her

forever.

Not of his face...

but of his body.

It comes to mind that she could have been stopped

that day

of such great heat,

because of leukaemia,

from getting out of the car and walking to him.

Or whether it is an ambulance

rented for this occasion

to see him...

that she saw him waiting.

- After this meeting at the Place de la Bastille...

she enters into a desire...

each night.

- Each night begs to die.

Each night demands to die of it.

People who scream at night

into the abyss, desperate to love...

they all give dates to each other.

These dates are never followed by meetings.

It is enough that they are made.

No one goes to them.

Never.

- It's the call into the abyss,

the cry,

that triggers the enjoyment.

- It's the other cry.

The answer.

Someone...

Someone replying that they heard the scream.

It is this response

that triggers the agony.

- You said you remembered this man

that screamed at dawn.

- Yes, I do.

He was calling.

He said he was the Cat.

I am the Cat...

Can you hear?

The Cat is calling...

This is the Cat...

- The tone was commanding.

- He was in command, yes.

At the same time he was begging.

- He said that the Cat was looking for someone.

That the Cat wanted to come.

- Yes.

- That he had to be answered.

- It was a man who answered.

The voice was very soft,

tender.

He said he could hear the Cat.

That he was answering her to tell her that,

that he heard it.

- He would tell her to come.

Come.

Come on.

Come.

- Yes.

The Cat's voice subsided into sobs.

It was in Paris in winter

around four o'clock,

in the middle of the night.

She tells him more.

She has two mothers.

She is a bastard.

Her official mother is not her real mother.

- His real mother is a former maid at the Hotel de Neuilly.

She is now retired. She lives in the suburbs.

'F' is watched.

Around her,

people are worried about these phone calls

so long,

at night,

because they make her very tired.

Her father...

He ordered that...

her telephone usage...

be limited.

- So that nothing else will happen.

Nothing...

Apart from these phone calls.

- It was the father's driver who first alerted her to the surveillance.

He too, this driver,

he wants what's best for her,

her survival,

like everyone else around her.

- One day... all of a sudden...

the house in Neuilly drifts away.

He believes she lies.

He no longer believes in her.

He can no longer see

that one dies there.

He still sees this house,

this drift

between the hedges, the parks,

where he doesn't see anymore that one dies there.

He no longer sees it as containing this legend

of an heiress,

leukemia,

and a bastard.

That of desire.

- He suddenly doubts one of the terms given by F,

the disease.

He tells her it's too much.

He talks about a ploy.

He tells her that she is lying.

That she is lying.

- So she talks about evidence

of leukaemia.

That hair she has

so blond,

very long, very beautiful,

a huge, astonishing mass in which it sleeps...

If he could only see.

- She is surprised.

How can he ignore something so common, so well known?

That leukaemia makes hair very long,

very beautiful,

exceptionally fair?

- He reminds her that the first night, she described herself as black-haired.

She tells him that he has heard wrong.

He does not desist.

- The dates become blurred.

The diary is no longer kept as regularly.

The chronology is no longer assured.

There is left...

only a global memory of the event.

So whole,

that just one of their nights,

testifies to the totality of their desire.

- Between days,

the partitions falls.

She says she is suffering.

Physically.

Suffering a lot.

More and more.

That she is very weak.

Weaker and weaker.

So weak that she falls,

and often.

And that she injures herself,

that she is marked all over her body

by bruises

and the wounds of her falls.

- And that her love...

is mixed with this pain.

She said:

the illness is getting worse,

is growing.

She says she continues to work in the hospital...

where she did her boarding school years,

but is in bed more and more frequently,

on a drip.

To live only on these infusions, these transfusions.

And then, sometimes,

suddenly,

to spring up again,

to live again.

- This constant swing

between life and death.

Disappears. Vanishes.

Dies. And then comes back to life.

He says

he begins to love her.

- In the house in Neuilly...

they are afraid.

He receives phone calls

from the father's wife,

the illegitimate mother.

She knows the telephone number of the young man from Gobelins.

He will never know whether it was 'F' who gave her this number...

or whether it was stolen while she was sleeping.

The illegitimate mother begs him to leave 'F' alone.

That those nights spent on the phone

exhaust her child,

and are killing her.

- He asks... how?

How could he leave her alone?

He has no way of calling her,

he does not know her address, name, or telephone number.

The illegitimate mother replies...

that the means would be...

to refuse to talk to her.

- He agrees.

Hangs up...

as soon as he recognises her voice.

- She calls back.

She disguises this voice.

He recognises her.

And then again...

he doesn't resist her.

He answers her.

- One day,

a woman calls in at his place

to bring him an parcel from 'F.'

She claims

to be the linen maid at the Neuilly house.

Perhaps the chauffeur's wife.

- The parcel contains two photographs.

It's a young woman.

She has blonde hair,

very long,

very beautiful.

She is rather tall.

Slim.

He says:

she has an ordinary face.

- She is photographed in a park.

It is a lawn between trees

and hedges.

- The parcel also contains a handkerchief embroidered with her initials

and a large sum of money in cash.

- The story ends with these photographs.

- Alone in the evening,

with these photographs

unrecognisable.

Locked in with them.

In despair.

The Night Ship has stopped on the sea.

There is no longer a possible route.

No directions.

- The desire is dead.

- Killed...

by a photograph.

- He can no longer answer the phone.

He is afraid.

Having seen the photographs...

he would no longer recognise her voice.

Who is she to be so unpredictable?

It's too late for her to have a face!

He must return these photographs.

Fast.

He doesn't know how to return them.

Nor to whom.

Then he remembers.

- The linen maid who delivered the parcel told him to contact the real mother of 'F.'

She said that they both lived in the same apartment building.

In the vicinity of Paris.

- The linen maid,

on the order of F,

gave him her own telephone number.

"Mademoiselle

told me to give you my phone number,

Here it is,

you never know."

- He dials it.

He rings the linen lady up.

A barrier is crossed.

The real mother phones.

"What can I do for you, sir?"

He says...

"I want to return the photographs to you."

She does not ask which photographs.

She says it's all right.

The appointment is made.

He will go to her house.

It's by Vincennes.

A flat purchased by F's father

as a reward

for the child.

There, she opens the door.

- Sixty years old.

The look

of a maid.

He says so,

she looks like a servant.

An exiled servant.

Alone on the thirteenth floor...

with a view of the eastern suburbs.

- The flat has a working-class style.

Plywood furniture.

European making.

Fake fur on the bed.

Immaculate cleanliness.

- Smooth face, absent gaze.

She takes the photographs from him

without a word.

He does not ask...

who the woman in the park is... young and blonde.

And she does not tell him.

She does not ask why he is returning them.

He asks her to tell him about 'F.'

She says

she gave birth to 'F'

before F's father married the other woman,

the one who has the father's name.

That after this marriage,

she was hired as the child's nanny in the Neuilly house.

- When the child was grown up, she was kept...

as a chambermaid.

"Always out of kindness," she says,

so as not to separate her from her child,

who is all that she has in the world.

He will never know anything...

about the relationship between 'F'

and her real mother.

Except for this:

late in her life...

'F' was already grown up,

when she was told that her real mother...

was the woman who was sleeping in the basement of Neuilly.

- That the woman loved by F's father, the only one,

had been this one.

- Several times, he would see the real mother again.

All on the orders of her child.

She would come back to him with more gifts,

more sums of money.

- The linen maid also, like the real mother, comes to see him.

Always on the orders of the young mistress of Neuilly.

They came to hand over envelopes containing money and gifts.

- Here is a gold lighter.

A lizard wallet.

But they are not the main thing.

- The main thing is the money.

They will never come to him without bringing a large sum of money.

He takes the money.

The amounts are considerable to him.

- She talks about giving him everything.

To give him a car,

a flat.

Everything.

Never again will she give him a photograph...

whether of other women or of herself.

Never again do they discuss the photographs.

They never will.

She knows that he refused them,

but she never asked him about it.

He says: I forgot the photographs.

It started again

as before.

What is the money given for?

What does the money pay for?

The love story perhaps?

A payment is made in this story.

There is, therefore, something that has a price worth paying...

in this story.

- When he takes the money, he confirms the payment.

No doubt money is here as it is elsewhere,

as everywhere,

in its salary function.

- Always delivered by the same hands.

In this case,

of the young mistress of Neuilly,

she pays him for giving her so much desire.

At first, he does not see anything in common...

between 'F' and her mother.

Then suddenly, when her mother phones...

to tell him that she is coming to deliver a present,

he finds that their voices are the same.

The inflections of their voices.

When she calls him, he mixes them up.

Often.

- It's she, who calls.

He can only reach her through the linen woman...

the chauffeur's wife.

- Several times, he asks the real mother to give him the phone number of 'F.'

She does not refuse.

- Each time, she gives him a telephone number.

Each time says,

that this one is the right one,

the correct one.

He calls.

He reaches the phone numbers of various local cinemas.

- She gives him dates.

She gives him ten dates.

He goes to each and all of them.

- These dates

are always made in public places,

so as to allow one to get lost.

The woods.

The Place de la République.

The Place de la Bastille.

The Champs-Elysées.

At times of heavy traffic.

At night.

By day.

- At any time of the day or night.

He believes she is not responsible

for this incapacity to come.

- That she falls prey to antagonisms stronger than herself...

and that her own disposal to these antagonisms

is her very strength.

That her surrender to these brutal forces...

is a testament to her strength.

- He still thinks it's possible that she will come.

As she herself believes it is possible...

until the last minute.

He says:

She can't manage to get out.

This thickness.

These woods.

She tells him about her father.

She talks to him about the money.

Often.

Her father.

He is feared.

He is revered.

Revered by all.

Feared by all.

His position is considerable.

He is the director of a major state agency.

Private financial adviser to the President of the Republic of France.

He is the provider of money.

The money

seems bottomless.

Ridiculous.

- A property on Lake Maggiore.

- Another

in Sainte-Marie de Provence.

- Another in Bormes-les-Mimosas.

- And this house in Neuilly.

She is the only heir,

'F,'

the child who will die.

- The father, he, never calls.

He threatens through the women of the Neuilly house.

"Their relationship must not be extended

beyond their phone calls."

- He believes it is less harmful

to the health of 'F,'

if it is not present and visible.

This backwardness of the father...

gives evidence...

of his illiteracy regarding desire.

- Once,

as she was calling him in the day,

he hears that someone calls a name in the house

and she answers.

It's the illegitimate mother, calling her child.

This is how he learns her given name.

- She does not deny it.

From then on, he called her by that name.

- But her last name... she says that is up to him to find out.

That there are different kinds of research possible.

A secondary form of research,

and the main form of research.

- The main research should take place at the Père-Lachaise cemetery.

She tells him how to get to the exact place of this main research.

It's here,

in the corner of a temple.

The place is not much visited.

The stones are green.

Monumental.

Unearthed.

Mostly unreadable.

- It is a bin of Empire marshals

enobled on the great places of death in the early 19th century,

of the Dukes of Dalmatia and Austerlitz,

of France and Waterloo,

of a villainious lineage of corrupted financiers,

of a riffraff emigrated in Neuilly on fear of the Commune,

and of the jumble of their wives and children.

- It's there...

that should be searched.

Her mother's name appears there, too.

As she is a descendant of the great military chiefs of the Napoleonic army

and of the financiers of the reign,

her name is there too,

in this flea market.

- But it is also, in this same flea market,

mixed with hers,

that appears the name of her grandfather on her father's side.

Therefore,

the name of her father.

Therefore,

hers.

- She does not explain why,

even before they are born,

the names of her mother and of her father

are already united

on the tombstones of Père-Lachaise.

- No, she doesn't.

- Misalliances, no doubt...

later corrected by these marriages?

Who knows?

- The explanation is lost.

He does not go to Père-Lachaise.

- She believes that he went there,

that he did the research she indicated.

For a while...

she thinks he knows who she is...

her name.

That with this name

he will be able to find the house in Neuilly.

- He does not tell her that he didn't go to Père-Lachaise.

- I told you where it was,

between two rooms,

the last ones

in this immensity of the city museum,

just before the room with the carcasses of copper horses

that were found

in 1960, in the harbour of the Pirareus.

It's from the facial injury, I think,

that it struck me so much.

This wound contrasted

with the look...

full, you see...

I watched it for a long time.

You didn't find her in the museum?

- I didn't.

- Her name is written.

- Athena.

- Yes, that's right...

She has the left side of her face torn off

as if by a ploughshare,

by iron,

but her eyes are intact...

white almonds

without countours.

Are there no reproductions?

- None.

- The head is very small, it would fit in the hand.

I told you

a child's head.

It is on a column lost between the tall steles,

the jumble of the last rooms.

Note, it is possible that having found it negligible,

because of this very injury,

the museum authorities stored it in the basement storerooms.

But what surprises me

is that it happened between my visit

and yours, i.e. in the same day...

- Why not?

- It's true... Why not...

The facial wound is terrible.

It must contribute a lot to the depth of the look.

- This look...

towards you...

- Yes, that's right,

a look that sees you, looks at you... but also sees through you.

And much further.

Beyond the end,

towards these distances... you see...

one cannot...

one doesn't know how to name them...

they are common to all whole story...

- I see

without seeing.

- Yes, that's right.

The next day, we left Athens,

and then nothing happened.

Nothing.

Except, always,

these cries.

Everywhere.

This same lack

of loving.

In Paris,

love,

always at night.

No issue.

Lust in sobs.

Between them, this impassable wall,

always.

Blind.

- Sometimes...

they cannot manage without each other.

- Other times, they cannot stand one another.

Argue.

Shout.

Split up.

- And one day,

jealousy erupts.

Unpredictable.

- Dreadful.

She wants to be the favourite

of all.

To be the only one.

- She disguises her voice,

calls on behalf of other women.

- He always recognises her.

- She has him followed.

Or she, herself, follows him.

He will never know which it is.

- No.

He never understood...

how it was possible...

how it happened.

- At night, she phones,

she recounts to him...

the time he left his job,

the places...

where he went,

the streets...

that he took on his bicycle...

before going home.

All the routes.

- He doesn't want to glance behind him.

He knows.

He knows to be caught under a surveillance

of every minute.

- He doesn't attempt to know...

who is there,

behind him.

She challenges him to a dance of death.

He plays this game...

as he could never have foreseen.

They both know it:

if he turns around

and sees who it is,

their story dies,

struck down.

- He knows...

He knows it is her.

The details given at night, on the phone, cannot fool him.

"And when you took the rue du Val-de-Grâce

there was a break in the weather

and you looked at the sky..."

He arrives home.

He rushes into the corridor of the building.

He knows:

she is there,

watching him disappear.

He doesn't look back.

He waits,

mad with desire

to the point of tears.

- It is during this period...

that he discovers the phenomenal power of his solitude,

the unaddressed violence of his desire.

- This is where...

he refuses the deadly story...

to remain in the abyss.

He now says that he never saw anyone following him.

- He also says,

that he noticed, once,

a car with a chauffeur

stopped at his working place.

Empty.

- One time,

while she telephones him in the silence of Neuilly in the evening,

he hears a man's voice asking Madame

"If it is necessary to serve."

So... there is a butler in the house in Neuilly.

- This trip to J. in Saône-et-Loire.

He had told her it was here where he was born.

Travels in the region...

until she finds the house.

Finds it.

Describes it to him upon her return.

Finds his mother's flat, too...

in a neighbouring town.

She phones her...

says to her...

that she is madly in love with him,

her son.

- Does he know if she is still alive?

- He says he doesn't... knows nothing.

- Can he find out?

- He could phone the linen lady.

But he can't do it now.

He doesn't have her number with him.

He does not remember her name,

and so he cannot make a request for information.

- In his opinion,

is she dead?

- He says: maybe,

that he does not know,

no idea...

But... most likely... yes...

she was so ill at the end.

- In the end?

- Yes,

when it stopped.

She had made the decision several times not to call him anymore.

- Once, she did it.

- Then once, she did it.

If she is dead,

if she died, her grave is in Père-Lachaise.

In this case we should know,

from the freshness of the gravestone's cut

and that of the earth being moved,

we should know it's her.

- The name, in this case,

which would be followed by the first name given,

would be hers.

- He says: I was mad.

We were mad.

- With what was he mad?

- He says he doesn't know exactly with what

he was mad.

That he couldn't have been mad

for her,

with desire for her.

How could this have been possible?

- With the image?

- With sheer desire?

- He replies that he does not know.

- Did she exist?

- Who?

Who would not have existed?

He says:

Yes, she did exist.

In any case.

She existed.

Whoever she was,

whoever she still may be,

she existed.

Exists.

- Wherever she came from,

she existed.

Exists.

Even if she were a sixty-year-old woman...

she would exist.

He says:

the question is groundless.

- Three years.

The number of hours spent on the phone? Months.

- There are periods, sometimes a month,

during which she does not give any sign of life.

Perhaps she is too ill during these times to do so.

- And then she calls back.

The common lust is dry.

Immense.

Bare.

Incomparable.

- One night, he asks her:

Did she have lovers before him?

Did a man approach her?

He has from her only the smell of the banknotes

touched by her hands.

- She says yes.

She had a lover.

A priest...

who she met on a train.

He fell madly in love with her.

She left him.

She gives him all of the details...

she cries the details.

- Their lust reaches murder.

She cries out as she recounts the ordeal

of the love-crazed priest

she had left.

He shouts that he wants to know

again.

- They meet at dawn

in separate beds.

They are silent.

Exhausted.

They cry.

- In the end,

she is in bed most of the time,

dying.

She is continuously on a drip.

Sometimes she faints on the phone.

- He knows it by her voice.

He distinguishes her voices

from her other voices.

Her voice in bed.

Her dying voice,

trapped,

or childlike.

- Her voice when she tells about her father.

Her living room voice,

her liar's voice.

- Her voice distorted,

with desire.

She can no longer lie to him.

- She gives him a clue about the house in Neuilly.

At the moment, a fountain is being built in the park.

Between the hedge and the lawn.

One day, he rides his bicycle through the streets of Neuilly.

A whole day.

He is not looking for the fountain in the park,

but beyond that.

An unexpected but convincing detail.

A wall colour.

A gate.

- A certain arrangement of the windows in the rooms.

A certain veiled light

on top of it all.

A sign from above.

- He finds nothing.

He says that he has not been to all the streets of Neuilly.

The next day

he starts again.

She lets him search.

She does not give any further clues.

- Except for this one though,

on the evening of that day,

that her room is visible from the street,

that the windows in her room are never closed,

and her bed is thus open

to all eyes.

- He says now...

that he could have found the house in Neuilly...

had he truly wanted to see it.

Did he have an image of her?

- He says that at first, yes,

he had this black image,

of a black-haired woman.

And then...

that black image was replaced...

by that of the two photographs.

And then again,

when the photographs have been forgotten,

he rediscovered that black image

from the beginning,

given by her through description.

He says that he now has no image of her.

- Does he say he lied?

- No.

He says he got the times mixed up,

days,

places,

not having a timeline...

not having a clear reason to...

not seeing the need for it.

He says that she, likewise, would have mixed up...

her own image in the mirror...

and that of the young man she caught a glimpse of, at the Place de la Bastille.

Between dying and living.

Between his body and hers,

unknown.

Between the unknown of one's own and all unknowns.

She wouldn't have known

whether she was the one

in the story

or the one,

outside,

who looked in at it.

- Perhaps...

on the nights she said she was doing so badly...

he passed under her windows...

and watched her die.

- A young man from Neuilly,

who passed by in the evening,

and stopped,

and watched her die.

- Once,

she went several days without calling.

When she started calling again,

she told him the news.

- She told him that she is getting sicker and sicker.

That she will soon die.

She also announces her marriage.

- Her husband-to-be is the doctor who had been treating her for ten years.

Does he remember?

The one who has always known her, who saw her being born?

Who has always protected and cared for her?

- Shortly afterwards, the phone rings.

A man.

He says he is the groom-to-be.

He demands that their relationship end.

He confirms her imminent death.

- He utters for the first time

the word

madness.

- For the first time the word is spoken:

madness.

- She calls

one last time.

- Tells him the date of the wedding.

Not the place.

- She says she only had love for him,

her only lover.

Regrets...

having to die.

The wedding took place on a summer's day in 1975.

He was not in Paris.

- You mentioned the sea too.

- Yes, perhaps...

Dead rats along the quays of Thessaloniki...

the smell of anise, the smell of ouzo...

the smell of the mud too...

of the end of the sea.

- You mentioned a film as well.

- Yes...

the film...

the film was not shot...

There would have been people here.

We would have discovered them here,

plunged into a very absorbing common reflection.

- Which, at the end, would have suddenly stopped.

- Yes, that's right.

- Or would have been stopped by death, for example...

- Yes.

Or by a sudden strike of doubt...

of a general nature.