Original subtitles

At Christmas, they gave this to

the old ladies and the old men

in the retirement home my mother was in.

She had it in front of her and I asked her to take it back,

to Paris, to keep it here.

Since my mother's, the feeling

to be, of having become dull.

The first one, the small one, 1970.

The second,

71.

And then the third, 72.

Day after day.

I'm reading my journal

from 1970.

Only difficulties, lack of money,

only

still confused ideas about cinema about

how to live about love:

disorder.

How did I get out of it, my God, how did I do it?

I start to read

my journal

from 35 years ago,

and I get an attack of gout.

Worse swollen.

Oedema.

Oedipus.

18th August 1971.

I find fault with Germaine,

my mother, I call her by her first name,

for listening to my phone calls

and then giving me advise on how to do my job.

She's at her dressing table brightening up her face, so gray.

She's crying.

I know I talk too much, she's sobs.

It wrings my heart, I want to cry too.

Germaine put on her dress with the filigree embroidery.

I took a jacket, a white shirt

and a yellow tie belonging to my father,

And we drove in the Alfa

to hear to "The Pearl Fishers" at the Casino.

Germaine and Tony, Tony is my father,

are waiting for us at the station and we go to Busset

in the fog cut by our dipped headlights.

Ir�ne puts her sea salt and her olive oil in the kitchen.

She tells Germaine that she's welcome to use them.

That draws the unfriendly response:

Oh, I'm not that fussy you know.

The salt, the leaven

and at the same time, the danger

in these books is Ir�ne.

I've reached 1971

in June,

and my throat...

there are seven months left to live

for Ir�ne.

When I lived with Ir�ne and I wrote

every day in this notebook,

I used to leave it on my table.

So she could have consulted it any time she wanted to. I never knew

whether she had or not.

For months and in nearly two years seeing that I had written for 2 years.

Obviously I didn't ask her.

And I wrote by the light of this lamp she had given me,

and she loved it because of the bird.

She knew things.

In my, in two films,

I asked her to write

two sequences, two or even three,

and I remember a bit dialogue, but I must find it again.

I almost called you at your office this afternoon

to steal you, even for an hour.

I had thought of a small hotel, the Hotel Cristal,

my mother always stayed there when she came to Paris to see me.

I nearly took a room

but I didn't.

Will you be long?

Seven minutes.

I almost called you at your office this afternoon

to steal you,

It happened like this...

even for an hour.

between Ir�ne and me.

This is word for word.

I thought of a small hotel, the Hotel Cristal,

my mother always stayed there when she came to Paris to see me.

You won't say a word about it to your mother.

No, but it's right next to your office,

and my mother always went there.

I nearly took a room.

Then I didn't.

Why not?

Because, I don't know, your work is important,

I didn't dare lead you astray.

This is beautiful.

You know I'd rather be the one you led astray.

I'm talking about you,

I said to lead you astray, it isn't a general idea,

it's something very specific that I'm telling you now.

I dreamt that Sophie Marceau phoned me,

arranged to meet me in a cafe I know, the Lamartine.

She said: I'll sit inside at the back, in the afternoon.

And she told me she was Ir�ne's daughter,

and she had the notebooks in her hands

to prove it.

And then she told me, but eh,

if you have, if you want to make a film about her,

I am the only one who can do it.

I hide her here.

I have a very old conversation that's been going on

for ages with her, I have never met her.

And I've always wanted to film her.

So where have I got to with you?

I am looking for a trick.

How should I film you, how...

bring back

your magic?

I haven't found yet, I haven't found, that's it.

Resist.

Yes, I must let go of the camera.

Camera charger,

tapes, just in case

we could shoot

something.

The film or the work.

The little black book of the novel for my film.

Will it succeed or will it implode?

Three days here without going out.

Not fleeing from you.

Without fear.

A lake, a small lake in the Vosges,

Retournemer.

We decide to swim across it.

In the middle of it, I've a cramp

in my right leg.

Had I been alone, I'd have died.

She drags me,

she was strong,

ashore.

My future life, for a few years,

was set.

It's Ir�ne, it's her, lurking

around the house at night.

She is there.

She's come to ask me something.

A film

a whole film about...

on a missing person, on a...

Then I tell myself it's only

the existence of these notebooks that is forcing me to make a film.

But in my opinion, there is something else

that attracts me

to her, to go to her.

I am looking for the men's room, I come

across Fellini.

Exit. The men's room is not indicated.

I'm at the cinema in the Trouville Casino.

Push. I push.

I come across The Passion of Christ.

Outside.

Ha! Toilets.

I find my ideas too much,

scattered,

and I thought that

it would be quite good if it all took place

in hotel rooms.

I remember

a girl who said to me:

"All the little Cavaliers who went through there".

When I think that when I die I'll be as stiff as a poker,

like some I've known along the way.

At noon, I ask

at reception, for a room until 7 pm.

Why these bars, that lock?

It amuses me to picture Ir�ne

who always walked very briskly,

because she thought her bum a little flabby.

But how to shoot that?

Am I looking for

an hidden, forbidden image

that I'd believe essential if I find it?

My mind and body

thank Ir�ne for her death.

They've learned

because of my suffering

and are better.

It's all very well having said that,

but I'm still waiting for the person

whom I will film and who will be

the body of my film.

Am I going to you?

Back to my first love?

Oh beautiful woman,

intelligent and lively,

who confirms the planet's faith

in the quality

of the human race.

Sunday, November 14th, 1971.

Ir�ne in the darkness of the room

gets her grub at 5 am.

I can hear her chewing her bread.

The wine flows into the glass.

She used to say boys, guys.

When she said men,

she meant bastards.

She'd rather make love in the morning.

In the evening it got in the way of her skilful preparations for the sleep.

Quite often, after she had a powerful orgasm,

she would sob her heart out.

At first I used to ask her what was the matter.

She didn't know.

She said, I love you, I love you

and cried and cried.

I stopped questioning her,

I wiped her tears

and stroked her hair.

She held me tightly against her.

I don't remember why I crossed that out here

back then.

This is Caroline's torch.

She owns this place that she's lending me.

Then

these are small pebbles

that I found here too,

and the balls

were, there were everywhere, all round the place.

What she wanted most

was to have a child.

This was linked to

the one

in her teens years

she had to get shot of

throw away.

And then she had her accident.

They took her to the hospital,

they took her out of her car, they took her to the hospital at Versailles.

They shaved her.

They shaved her there too.

On account of

her big belly,

they put her on an

operating table,

and then

that is where she drew

her last breath.

And she left me,

she left me,

with the little flame, she left me.

And she saved me at the same time.

This duvet

really makes me think about her.

This kind of stillness a little animal like, of waiting.

And then suddenly she spoke

and

appeared in public.

But when she was alone,

then,

when she was at home,

she had

a grace.

This is what I preferred.

I watched her.

She had brown eyes

a genuine focused look.

Nevertheless I had noticed the last 2 or 3 years,

that they were becoming a little...

not opaque, but a little misty,

as if there were a fine veil over them,

and this struck me.

But when she felt that

she

she wasn't getting her role

across, it wasn't working,

it made her furious, she wanted

to go back home.

This is the little ferryman

who took her to...

to the river,

he made her cross it, it was very very wide,

and he led her into the Underworld.

There are three things that are beyond me

and four I do not know:

the path of the eagle in the heavens,

the path of the snake on the rock,

the path of the ship on the open sea

the path of man in young women.

I bought this for my hostess,

as a small welcome home bouquet.

And then

the problem

is, is to say

that when she was in so much pain,

when she wanted to disappear,

I was so,

involved, terrified,

I wanted to save her,

to save her and at the same time

I thought I was going to lose everything,

I was going to disappear with her,

and sometimes I wished she would die.

One day I was out for a walk with her, she was ahead of me,

and there were stones on the ground,

I had split myself in two, had stepped outside myself,

I picked up a stone, and smashed the back of her neck,

and afterwards I became one again.

Oh I've had a quiet nap, and then I got a small very powerful image,

I put

my notebook for '71

on my camping stove.

But still it's very strange,

I mean, I wanted... Phew!

I would really have liked to burn right through it,

to destroy it, the images are too intense,

it's too difficult,

but at the same time

it holds the spell.

Dear Ir�ne.

This window in front of my work table

reminds me that one day she

had come in and gone to the window.

And she had a small old-style salad basket,

with salad, for shaking the salad.

She had opened the window, shaken the salad

we were on the 4th floor, overlooking the garden,

and then she turned towards me

and shook the salad

in front of my desk, on the floor, just like that,

several times, looking at me.

Earlier I had taken notes

on the desk, to...

forget nothing,

and then I actually forgot everything.

Text on the table: To play with fire - Respect - Ir�ne - Me - Risk - Spectator

Devil - Opposite - Provocation - the piece of paper the 2

I don't remember,

these scales, perhaps they were there.

Then I remember very well the...

soap dish

and the mirror.

Now that's what I like,

this noise,

that.

She slept by the door,

me on the inside.

No, she was on the inside.

She was a light sleeper, and I was by the door.

The waiting in January,

until midnight, until the phone call.

We slept

in this room

in a friend's house

where we used to go, regularly.

We had

lunch,

and after the lunch

she decided to take a walk

in the forest.

I said all right, but wait a minute, I'm not ready.

I was in the bedroom and I heard her,

getting impatient and she said, well, are you coming,

and I said to her, hold on,

hold on a minute.

And suddenly she said I'm off.

And she got into the car.

Now you can't see the street, the car

was parked behind the gate.

A 6 pm she wasn't back,

nor at 8 pm.

We made a few phone calls,

to this one and that, we weren't too worried.

By 11 o'clock

nothing.

I sat there

at the end of the sofa,

and suddenly

the phone rings.

I think it was

the same phone.

And from where I am,

I can see the legs

of the householder

give way under him.

I learned later

that they had told him his wife was dead,

because it was his wife's car,

there were no papers,

the police station, it was on a Sunday, had to investigate.

He realized after a few moments that it was not his wife who had died,

but mine.

He broke the news to me,

and I remember crying out

loudly

and then collapsing.

Then faces and visits.

And I stayed here alone

in the room, in this large room, in this bed.

I ended up falling asleep

Yes, I leaned over, she was there, down there.

No, wait a minute, there's no rush.

She says I'm going, I'm going, well, go ahead, go ahead.

Maybe even a little rougher than that.

And I clearly saw the car starting, saw it clearly, clearly

and the empty parking space afterwards, I remember it very well.

Now it's 7 pm,

she'd been gone for three hours.

It was still possible

she's got a bit lost going back to the car.

But I was forgetting, after all it was January,

and sunset is about 5 o'clock.

In fact we were terribly worried.

But how... she is, she went into the forest of Rambouillet,

how to find her, where to find her?

I think we phoned the police station, I think...

I don't remember, I should ask.

But I daren't ask, I don't want to ask.

There.

That's it.

Back to the present.

I'm breathing more easily anyway.

I got hold of your mobile number

and I can't dial it.

I can't

take the plunge

and suggest that you be in this film

in the little time, in the few free moments you have

that we meet briefly, and that then

you go back

to your normal life.

I even met a beautiful girl, Vanessa.

She came here.

She has this way, just like Ir�ne, of going,

in a split second from brightness to sadness, to absence.

She moved me, she told me that her father came to see her,

they drove

up on to a mountain,

and together they had looked out over the vast landscape,

and she had wanted it to last all her life.

I'm having trouble here.

What I have to say to him is so long, I'll need t o shorten it.

- But why? - I can't be concise.

But why would you be?

Well, otherwise, it's going to take 25 pages.

- Doesn't it matter? - No, you can read it,

25 pages of tenderness, you can read it in a second.

True.

Ir�ne is so alive, so clear,

so unique in my head, that...

impossible to piece it together with her,

or with others.

Well, I'm going to clear them all out, get rid of them.

They will never be her, never, her.

My phone is calling me.

It's a sign.

Ir�ne,

when we went to an hotel together...

I didn't mind

being taken for a sex maniac, I was one.

She fell asleep.

A man alone, it's nothing, it's light,

it passes.

Mummy, little boats that go on the water

do they have legs?

I'm going to a friend,

of mine and Ir�ne

and I will ask no questions.

I prefer to go down alone to the darkness.

Fall, escalator, while holding the camera.

I took a hell of a blow on my nut.

It can be said that...

I'm looking at myself.

I'm not wearing my glasses,

but for once, I see myself very well.

My new and latest face

has arrived, old chap, have a good look,

have a good look.

The fall on the escalator,

while filming,

in the m�tro station, rue de la Pompe.

Drop it.

Don't make this film. Don't make this film. Don't make this film.

Drop it, you fell, on the escalator, it's a sign, stop.

This is the expression she had when I wanted to make a film about her,

the slight panic, the touch of anxiety you had,

a fortnight before shooting.

And at the same time you were tempted,

as I would film you,

as I would be deeply interest in you.

I found a little money,

a flat, we were going to retreat there for 4 or 5 weeks.

If you like, it was to be about you and me, in reality

a mutual investigation, a short inventory,

very tender, but at the same time,

it might be rough, and you could sense that.

A few days before the shooting, your accident,

a lightning strike.

A trace lost forever.

What horror! What horror!

So, let's recap.

I am filming on the escalator

I fall,

I go back home,

three weeks later, I have terrible shingles.

I remember that I lived, that I lived

50 metres away from the Pompe m�tro station, why?

When I first met Ir�ne,

I had a tiny studio.

When I met her,

I lived a minute away from the m�tro station, 50 metres away from the station

where I almost died, where I was almost crushed,

in a small caf� that's still there,

a small traditional caf�, from the 50's.

I had a little studio up there,

she used to park discreetly behind the secondary school

and come to see me.

I am 50 metres away

from my birth place.

My mother gave birth at dawn, and my father

wanted

to leave for his work in Paris and he took the train

at that same moment, leaving me there.

I was born behind those gates,

3 rue Charles Chautard,

at Vend�me.

A slice of watermelon

from the market at

the Avenue de Versailles, which immediately attracted my attention, then

once home, I hollowed it out

and put an egg inside.

It's me

waiting to come out of my mother's womb.

But there was a small problem, I was positioned buttocks first,

that is, I was a breech, when I should have been head first.

Then they

stuck

a pair of forceps into my mother's womb,

what is called forceps,

and they turned me right over, inside her.

There.

It was rather hard,

and they got me out

by the head.

The problem is that I broke the mould, that's to say after

this butchery,

my mother couldn't have children, other children,

and that's what happened to Ir�ne

early in her life as a woman,

that is

to remove her child

they stuck a probe

into her womb,

to widen the passage and

empty this embryonic child out of the womb

and it came out a little way, and as she said, it bumped against

her pants.

The father was a very young medical student.

Ir�ne said that she went

straight to the bourgeoisie.

Fortunately her father knew nothing about it,

because he would have beaten her to a pulp.

He crashed into me, she said, he crashed into me.

And nevertheless,

when she was a child he used to lift her up with... he was strong,

so lightly, with such tenderness,

that she almost fainted.

And all those men

who wanted to have sex, men who wanted to have sex with her,

she ended up...

they were so insistent, she ended up saying yes,

but in the morning...

Ir�ne got up early (she didn't hear her alarm clock)

to go to the Cohen Clinic, on the rue de Marignan.

He ventilated her tubes, to unblock them.

She came back rather sad,

because there was no contact between her and the doctor.

I bled.

She still believed in it.

She believed in it.

She's driving, I am sitting

on her right and I surreptitiously look at

her foot on the accelerator,

and then she stops... We were staying in a...

house for the weekend, where I'd met her, and

she had a spare seat, she'd taken me and brings me back to Paris.

And she stops, we have a walk, a kind of

tiny forest, very sparse,

we chat and then,

as we're walking, she takes my arm, very lightly,

and then we get back into the car.

And when we arrive in Paris, then what is the...

I'll go home, I'll drop you,

what do we do, etc... etc...

And finally it was

quicker to drop me home first.

In fact,

she came up for a drink,

and stayed and left early in the morning.

When she left, she told me she would phone.

I slept, I waited.

I stared at the phone.

I didn't go out,

in case she called.

And then finally I understood

that she'd gone back to her normal life and that a repeat

of the free ride, as they say,

might be light years away.

But I kept

hoping, and one day she did call and told me I'm leaving for the Vosges.

And I went with her

to the small lake

of Retournemer.

That sterility that tormented her so much,

actually, being a man

suited me.

She used to reproach me regularly with two things.

The first for getting her to drink wine.

I told her, but listen, wine

is the blood of Christ.

In the gospels, you read them as I did,

he pours wine and says to his disciples:

"Take, drink for this is my blood."

The second thing was that

I had caused her to lose her faith,

and I replied, listen

what I really want is for you to have faith in you,

while you spend your time saying, I do everything wrong.

Then at that moment, she began

to think about that and she said,

you're muddling me up.

And she always had that wonderful phrase,

I wish I knew my secret.

I wish I knew my secret.

I also loved:

I can die open-mouthed, sir...

I loved it.

She knew that inside her she had something

difficult, and she couldn't manage to...

We're having dinner in the kitchen

and Ir�ne says to me:

- Listen, something happened to me, I'm going to tell you a story.

I was at a dinner

and as usual, you're never there, you're filming, you are on location...

I was at a dinner, and then the conversation

turned to love, to what each of us liked to do.

Then one man said,

what I like is to pay women,

to pay women, not professionals,

and just then, his eye fell on me and he saw me look down.

I looked down.

He phoned me,

suggested we get together and I went.

And it wasn't too bad, I didn't like him when I first saw him,

and then I must say it wasn't unpleasant.

And she said to me, doesn't it bother you what I'm telling you?

And do you know why I'm telling you this?

Because I would like you to beat me, but I would like to deserve it,

and now I deserve it.

I don't move.

And then all of a sudden she flies into some sort of rage.

She starts by smashing her plate on the floor,

then opens the cupboard and the whole service goes, piece by piece.

I slip out, I go for a walk down the street.

I wouldn't want to lose anything of my little sweetie.

Where did I get the energy, only a few days after her death,

to write down her erotic litany.

Today I could not piece it together.

My pen has left nothing out, not a single invocation,

not a single cry, I've written it all.

But words get colder and colder season after season.

Now they scarcely help me to feel any emotion.

They are death and no longer that illusion of life going on

that I kept as long as I could.

"The Lady of the Camellias", she's watching Greta Garbo

dying in the arms of Armand on television.

She's sitting against the wall,

on the bed, it's very hot, we have no clothes on,

and I'm lying across the bed with my head resting on her lap,

and from that low angle I see

tears rolling down her face

and I feel against my ear

the jolts of the sobs in her stomach,

tears flowing across her breast and on my face,

and then the drama stops.

She says, but it's too stupid,

there are so many people who don't love,

that when it happens,

it's foolish not to make it work.

I found back this photograph again

I took one evening,

of Ir�ne comforting her sick dog.

He died two days later.

I've never seen a face

as tormented by pain as Ir�ne's.

And while she looked at

"The Lady of the Camellias", I was exactly, my head

was exactly where Ignace had been.

It's a beautiful picture of her, because,

I prefer to keep her alive in my head,

rather than frozen in photographs.

He is saying to her there that he's going to leave her soon.

I could see it, but she didn't want to.

I remember, she was on the couch in the living room.

Ir�ne at 15 with her mother on her right

and her father

between his wife's parents.

And her father loved his parents-in-law, because his were dead,

asphyxiated by a stove.

They were on holiday at Ste-Maxime.

Ir�ne is pushed by her friends,

wins Miss Ste-Maxime, Miss Riviera

and Miss France.

She was really 15 because it's on the back, in her mother's writing.

Her father was a boilermaker.

He bought an old truck.

He started to transport furniture,

and he ended up having a shop with kitchen furniture

and rustic furniture.

Her mother worked in a delicatessen

in Brittany.

A short time before her death,

she looked at me...

sometimes... like that...

she was waiting.

The house where I learned of Ir�ne's death

has been sold by our hostess, so thoughtful.

I can no longer see, hear Ir�ne,

moving.

I was standing at this window

when she said, well are you coming then,

I said, wait a minute... she told me she was leaving.

And she got into the car there.

And she left.

She never came back.

She went out, she went out through this door.

Two minutes after she left,

at the next crossroads, someone crashed into her.

She is still lucid, she tells the rescuer

how best to get her out of the wreckage.

So it was just a few minutes after 3 pm.

She didn't give them the number

for where I was,

the number for the owner of the car.

She thought she'd come out of it all right,

I'm no good, I did a bloody stupid thing.

Edouard Manet, Mus�e des Beaux-arts in Lyon

Jacqueline Delubac donation.

This is exactly Ir�ne's look.

I've never found it anywhere else.

Her father

used to say, that money I earned, I sweated it.

Commies, they work

they're workers like me, but then, they go to the pub.

He had a gun for self-defence,

in case of burglary, and he said,

I'd fire the second bullet into the ceiling.

I'd preferred have the butcher than the pig, and he slept

with

a gun under his pillow.

When she was a child and a teenager, she lived there,

his parents had the apartment above,

on the corner of the rue de l'Annonciade and the mont�e des Carmelites.

And she was an only child, closely watched,

and she had learned to present two sides of herself in order to get on.

One day she was at a party

with some young people in the posh part of town.

Some jewelry was stolen. The parents realized it,

and suspicion

fell on the little prole, on Ir�ne.

And her boyfriend didn't exactly stand up for her.

Her bag was searched.

And I think there were guys

who paid dearly afterwards.

I believe Ir�ne felt caged

in her hometown of Lyons, I think so.

She wanted to go.

I've drunk a little Beaujolais, I'm at the end of the meal,

I must speak softly so that you don't hear me.

I've been in her hometown for 3 days, I'm

at the same time elated and oppressed.

I see her all the time,

as a child, as a girl,

and even at the age she would have been now.

And at the same time I think that she got here, in this city,

I could almost touch it, but it is indistinct, a hard blow.

A hard blow, and she never recovered from it.

And she was extremely open and passionate,

and when she was a child, she was asked to write a composition about a dream,

and she told the story

of a child who suddenly, like her,

a little boy, who turned into a plane,

and he was the little boy she loved, and she got no marks.

I leave Lyon, the city of Ir�ne.

I find the small courtyard again, a bird has died on the table.

I find again my child from Chernobyl again.

Saddam Hussein hanged

photographed on a mobile.

And her, meditating,

looking for some light

still bare,

the books,

meditation,

the knees,

and the shoulders.

After so many years, I'm almost certain

that Ir�ne wanted to die for a reason only she knew,

and she knew that she would never talk to anyone about it,

she could not talk about it.

My notebooks, '71,

I restored it after burning it.

Fortunately, I didn't burn it right through.

I open them.

I search for her.

6th October 1971.

Ir�ne's father says that he succeeded,

and that she is useless.

This is not the time to go

to take a trip to Lyons, for a visit to Lyons.

Ir�ne left to become someone,

she won't go back empty handed.

Ir�ne arrives in the old 404,

Marianne's convertible.

She brings her oil, her salt and her wine.

She's been horribly depressed all day.

My mother sent me a cheque

for 600 francs that will go straight to the taxman, she said.

Threat of bailiffs.

During dinner I drink a lot of Alain's local wine.

To soothe, to numb my poor head.

Ir�ne would really like me to grow a moustache.

Ir�ne heard Lederman (C�line) on the radio

boasting about his shoes with the built-up heels

to raise short people,

without joking, she talks seriously about it,

and says that she could wear high heels.

See Jean-Louis, he has some of them...

This morning I heard Ir�ne getting up.

Her movements made me realize that she wasn't well.

She came towards me, her face haggard,

and she said:

I feel like committing suicide, it's terrible.

I said: I'll tie you up.

Her disillusioned answer was:

you'll be well rid of me...

I've just arrived at the chateau

belonging to my old school friend.

Something's waiting for me, I think.

I couldn't decide between a convent cell and this place.

I almost tossed a coin.

The bed of my host,

of my childhood friend.

He has sprained his ankle in Paris, so

he is not here to welcome me.

What can I do in such a large house, I'm used to living

in small city flats.

The mistress of the place

dead.

Our dear dead.

My friend knew Ir�ne very well

when we lived together.

They very kindly offered to let me choose my wine from the cellar,

where I... I didn't go.

After the death of his daughter Ir�ne,

Joseph used to say:

"But what did I ever do to God to deserve this?"

"What did I do to him?"

Here I am, asking him the question.

I'll turn on the light or I won't have any landmarks in the dark.

I might break my neck on the stairs...

There, I've switched on the light, I can go to my sleeping quarters.

This staircase is dreadful.

The last two steps in the dark, you can't see them.

Because she was a light sleeper,

we had a room each.

When we stayed at a hotel, we always asked for two beds.

And a room for each of us meant a flat rather...

whose rent was rather expensive.

I made commercials

at one point, to pay for it.

The difference between us was that

she tended to ask me everything,

and she had the feeling that

I never asked her anything,

just to exist, to be there.

I remember almost with tenderness,

her stubborn,

stupid look when she denied the evidence,

and she swore that it wasn't true

on someone's head, who was very dear to me.

She told me, still, you know I might feel better

if you were a famous director,

You see, I can dare say that to you, I know it's terrible,

but for once I'm honest with you, I'm saying it to you.

It would do me good, it's silly,

but it's like that.

And it killed me to be

the source of her well-being, of her pain,

always

guilty but responsible.

And it bugged me,

and I wanted it to stop,

and I was waiting for our separation,

but I wished it to come from elsewhere.

I couldn't instigate it myself.

I came on this drawing, I thought that

it was the sign,

I had to go there.

Where is the + missing? / Incision on milk / curds truffles / Find forgiveness

Now there is, since 4 o'clock I've been awake since 4 o'clock.

I've found here,

"Mon plaisir" by Paul Morand.

I've been alone in this huge chateau for

over 15 hours,

and here I can

wander around in my mind.

I take the little ferryman's boat, cross the river

and arrive in the land of dead souls.

I found the little ferryman again.

He took me in his boat, we crossed the river.

We entered the land of shades, I looked for you,

and then I found you, you were in front of me,

silent,

thoughtful,

a little preoccupied, I spoke quickly,

before you could disappear,

I reminded you about that dinner you had prepared

when you made me drink champagne,

one bottle, then another bottle,

and then you were irresistible

and at one point you looked hard at me, remember,

you remember it very well, you looked hard at me,

and you

asked me for

a specific humiliation.

You told me: you are the one to give it to me,

no one else,

because you are the one I love.

My heart was pounding, I didn't know how to answer you,

I was struggling to leave you,

you had tried to commit suicide,

the gas had spread into the stairwell,

the whole building almost blew up.

And then I agreed

to enter your secret room.

You took my hand.

And afterwards, your face

your face was,

so relieved, so peaceful,

irradiated, irradiated by your own light,

which now came solely from you.

And that was for me

an absolutely unique joy in my life.

You had waited.

You had waited.

You were waiting, you were waiting for me.

And then, your death... Stay here! Your death, your death afterwards,

so soon,

and so short a joy.

Today I ask your forgiveness.

Here, I have come to ask for your forgiveness.

I'm here to ask for your forgiveness.

Don't go away yet.

Ir�ne's dear wounds

that still keep me alert.

They are hers, and they are ours.

With Ir�ne you can make reine/queen

or renie/deny, she denies.

We won't go back to the woods,

the laurels have been cut.

This beautiful girl,

will go and pick them up.

Join the dance, see how we dance,

Sing, dance, kiss whoever you want.

That was yesterday.

January 14th, 1972

the day before her death.

It's Saint Nina's day.

We went to the balcony

for the premi�re of her film "Faustine et le bel �t�".

On the way out, I meet Ferry

who agrees to my film about Ir�ne.

Under my skin, I feel faint with pleasure.

Ir�ne stands a little apart,

discreet, chic.

The die is cast, it's wonderful.

At the hospital in Versailles where Ir�ne had been operated on

and had died,

they were ready to put the lid

on the coffin, I had to be there,

as a witness that it was she who was in it.

They came to the car to get me, in the hospital courtyard.

And I didn't move, I didn't get out.

And it was my brother who was sitting next to me who took my place,

and who did the work for me,

he said it was she,

and they closed it, they screwed down the lid.

If I had gone to see her dead face,

perhaps I wouldn't have made this film.

I'm waiting for a train to Paris

and I'm the only one.

May 13th, 1972.

Five months after her accident.

I try to think aggressively

of all the harm that she could have done me. Idiotic remedy.

Today, the harm seems wonderful.

It was life,

like the life she had put up with from me.

That volley I gave her on

our wedding day, the morning of our wedding,

becomes a gesture from our time of light.

Betrayal, injustice, cowardice

are as precious as love, tenderness, strength.

She thoughts life was hard.

She savoured every little joy.

She had a naivety about happiness that moved me.

We used to celebrate with no hesitation at a good restaurant,

at the Lou Landes for instance.

She said: "when I'm happy, you'll see".

If I were happy.

I'm no interested in travelling till I'm happy.

I was certain that she would succeed some day.

I was obsessed with that.

I was loosing myself in that obsession.

Sunday,

bells come to me.

After Ir�ne's death,

my mother always had a picture of her

on her bedside table,

and I always thought that

she did it to please me.

Well, today I think differently.

I would like to thank...