All language subtitles for Penelope.My.Love.2021.720p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

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Pelo, I need to tell you something.

- In code.
- Yes.

Anna, the director at MAIA

has found somewhere for you to live.

And your mom and dad
and Nicolas and I agreed to it.

We said yes.

It's a place in Paris.

We can come to see you
whenever you like.

And whenever we like.

Your dad, your mom, Tatiana,

your grandparents, your cousins...

your aunts.

Can you hear me?

Are you listening?

We all have to live our lives.

It's hard, but that's how it is.

PENELOPE, MY DEAR

For a long time,
I thought that life was simple,

simple, like the sea, the flowers
or the air we breathe.

Life seemed enchanted to me.

We were free to harvest

its delicious fruits
and divine pleasures.

We were free
to choose whatever we desired.

Nicolas and I wanted a child.

And no sooner
had we formed that desire

than, as if by magic, I was pregnant.

I was happy to be bearing life.

At the birth, the midwife told me,

"Be with your child!
Be with your child!

"Oh, darling, she's beautiful."

As parents we were amazed
that we had created life

and intoxicated
by the feeling of a new love.

Who's a beautiful baby?

She's pedaling, in the water.

Look!

Will you give me your little hands?

Are you going to soap her up?

Wait, she's got a hair under her arm.

It doesn't matter.

It does.

Don't pull it. She's holding it down.

You need to learn to sleep.
You don't know how to.

Penelope wasn't sleeping at night.

But she seemed fine to us.

At three months,

she'd follow my hand
along the cradle.

That was our first game.

Until she was two years old,
she developed like other kids.

Or, that's what we thought,
at the time.

Penelope was our first child.

No, that's you. That's you!

She's thinking.

I experienced
the feeling of lost innocence,

that summer.

We had gone on vacation
with some friends.

There were other children,
of Penelope's age.

She was different.

I could see it, without seeing it.

A woman pointed out to me
that she was hyperactive

and advised us
to consult a specialist quickly.

I immediately took
a strong dislike to her.

Why was she interfering?

But then a few days later,
when I was taking this photo,

my head suddenly started spinning.

Penelope didn't seem different
from the other children,

but behind the surface image,

I could feel
there was another reality waiting.

At two and a half,

Penelope lost the skills she had,
within a few months.

She stopped mixing with people.

She stopped talking
and she stopped playing.

She'd wake up, shouting,
during the night,

and she'd keep herself awake,
to avoid sleeping, until dawn.

It's hard to get your head around
a child that's regressing.

And it's hard
to summon up those memories.

I don't have any footage
of those times,

just a mental image,
that sometimes haunts me.

Penelope, spinning, like a top,

constantly rubbing her hands,
at eye level.

Penelope, running in the street.

The leaves, blowing on the wind.

We had just seen
a reputed child psychiatrist.

Nicolas and I had explained to him

how Penelope had been
over the last few months.

The doctor
looked me straight in the eye.

"I'm going to tell you a story.

"It's about a mother,
who comes in with her son.

"The mother says
that her son's not very well.

"The doctor looks at the child

"and says,
'You're right, this child isn't well.

"'You need to come in again,

"'twice a week, even,
but without your child.'"

That made me feel
like I had a lead ball in my belly.

If I got better,
would she get better too?

I felt disagreement,

mixed with feelings of powerlessness
and blind rage.

When I went back to film there,
I saw the digger.

I was happy, because it was like
it cleared everything away,

the memory and its burden of pain.

Play.

Wait.

One day,
a doctor looked me right in the eye.

"This isn't nice to say or to hear,
but you need to know:

"Penelope is autistic."

Without knowing
exactly what that meant,

I spoke to the psychoanalyst
that Penelope was seeing.

She said,

"As soon as I saw your daughter,
I knew she was autistic.

"I didn't tell you sooner,
because you weren't ready for it."

I couldn't believe it.

But who is ready?

When would you be ready for that?

"You're going to go to a center,
Penelope.

"We'll give you a sedative
and you'll feel better.

"You should call the center tomorrow.
It's very good.

"We need to move fast now."

For a long time,
whenever I walked down her street,

I felt a violent desire
to smash her door down.

A year of silence. A wasted year.

But once we had found out,
there was no time to lose.

I went to see a lot of specialists.

They would often ask me not to stay,
due to professional confidentiality.

I found that shocking.

But it suited me too.

I'd go to the café,

to enjoy my precious minutes
of freedom.

One day, I heard about ABA,

I heard about a behavioral therapy,
from the USA.

Sustained work, at 40 hours a week,

was supposed to enable children

that started treatment
before the age of five

to return to a normal life.

I made a pact with myself.

Penelope was three years
and nine months old.

I gave myself three years
to save her.

As summer began,

we did some behavioral training,
with my family and some friends.

There was Céline, Jean-Claude,
Mylène, Camille,

France, my mother,
and Raphaëlle and Marie, my sisters.

We needed to address
the most urgent matters,

to learn to react when Penelope

threw herself to the ground,
in the street,

when she got up, for nights in a row
or when she bit.

Bike.

Bike.

Bike.

Penelope, look at me.

Great, you're looking at me.

Give this to Noé.

That's good. You looked at Noé. Nice!

Good job!

We'd work with Penelope,
whenever we could.

Penelope.

We taught her to make suitable,
useful, controlled movements.

Good. Say, "Te."

Whenever she got an answer right,

she'd be rewarded,
with something she liked,

a candy, for example.

That's great!

OK, let's go again.

Say, "Ra. Ra."

"Quet", "quet"...

- "Quet-te."
- "Quet-te", yes..

Penelope. "Ra-quet-te."

Again.

I can see now
how brutal those sessions were.

I thought that was the price,

to get Penelope back
to the peripheries of society.

The peripheries of society.

That was my idea of getting better.

My grandmother asked,

"Do you believe what they say,
with their methods?

"That's absurd.

"You need to leave that child
in peace.

"Love is the only cure."

"Right, love is a fine thing,"
I said.

"But Penelope needs to learn
to talk, to write and to count."

"And to go to school,
like other kids."

She said, "Don't be so silly.
School's a waste of time."

Hey, come on, pull a face, like this.

Go on, go like this.

Say, "tree."

Tree. Tree.

Say, "Tr."

Say, "Tr."

Say, "ee."

Say, "ee."

Look. Look at me, Penelope.

"Tree."

"Tree."

Look, there's someone waiting for us.

You're walking well.

Who's that? Pelo! Pelo!

Take it easy, Pelo.

Pelo, Pelo.

Pelo, wait.

Pelo, Pelo! Pelo!

- Pelo.
- Wait!

Wait.

Good, you waited.

Pelo.

Good. You're looking at me.

That's good. You're nice and calm.

That's a post.
It makes music, if you hit it.

Look.

Hit it.

Yes, that's good.

Hit it.

Yes! Again!

That feels good. Good stuff.

Bye-bye, post.

Take it easy, Pelo. Pelo, Pelo, Pelo!

Pelo, we're walking.

We're walking.

And you say...

Yes, so, "Help..."

- Help me.
- Yes.

And then...

Calm down. Nice and calm.
Everything's good.

That's great.

What do you want to do, Pelo?

Go up.

No, now you want to go d...

I want to go up.

You don't want to go up.
You already went up.

- I want to go dow...
- Go down.

Yes, so tell me.

Help...

No, Pelo, say to me,
"I want to get down. Help me."

Help me.

OK, I'll help you.

One!

Two!

- Three!
- Three, yes!

Penelope woke up at night.

I could hear her little voice,
repeating what she had learned.

It seemed incredible to me.

She was rediscovering language
and play.

At times like that,
I felt like I had won a war.

I was laughing for joy, inside.

Sometimes, I'd feel her look,
full of anxiety and incomprehension.

And then I'd feel powerless.

I'd hold her tight in my arms.

We're in Mulhouse
and Pelo is walking in the forest.

We're with my mom...

France.

Yes, Pelo!

Pelo!

Pelo.

Pelo.

Every month, we went to Mulhouse,
to a specialist center,

run by an amazing couple,
Mr. and Mrs. Wimbert.

Following Dr. Tomatis's method,

Penelope listened to frequencies
that help build myelin back up.

That's a fatty protective material,
around the neurons.

She's listening to a filtered version
of her mother's voice.

Mom...

Go alongside her.

Yes, Mom...

I liked going there.

I drew.

I listened to music
and read stories aloud.

Mr. and Mrs. Wimbert

suggested reading The Little Prince
to her.

When I got to the part
when the fox says,

"I can't play with you,
I'm not tame,"

I thought about Penelope.

"Tame."

That implies forming bonds.

That was the whole challenge:
to form bonds.

Play something.

We stayed
with the town's Protestant pastor

or at the Ibis hotel.

In the evening,
there was the bath-time ritual.

Penelope would often wave her hand,
splashing it nervously in the water.

But one evening,
she started playing with a tea set.

She poured water in a cup
and handed it to me.

"Here's some tea. Here you go."

She was pretending to be an adult,
imitating the melody of the phrasing.

The language was there,
hidden somewhere.

The post...

And we said it...

And we...

On Saturday evening,

Penelope woke up in a fit of tears.

She cried for a long time,
calling for me.

She put her arms around me
and snuggled up to my neck.

She's still very unsettled,

but that was the first time
that she went to sleep in my arms.

Today, Mrs. Wimbert told us

that Penelope would go to school
next year, for sure,

like all the other children

and that we had done
a really good job.

And that we'd need to come back,
regularly, for the next year.

And that we had made good progress.

Pelo?
Who's that little girl in the mirror?

Who's the little girl,
looking at herself in the mirror?

What's her name?

What's your name?

Say it louder.

What's your name?

- What? I didn't hear.
- Penelope.

Penelope. That's right, darling.

And how old are you, Penelope?

I didn't hear.

- I'm four.
- You're four?

You're five now.

You've been five for two days.

This is the...

I didn't get that. What do you want?

Take a bath.

- You want to take a bath?
- Yes.

Do you want to take a shower?

Little bear... Little brown bear.

A little brown bear or a shower?

- Shower!
- A shower.

Will you take it off?

Penelope?
Shall we take that sweater off?

I'll undo the button.

Then give the sweater to me. Thanks.

And the t-shirt.

Go ahead. Take it off.

Is that difficult?

What do we say, when it's difficult?

- "Help me."
- Help me.

Good.

Do it on your own now.

Nice job! That's great.

And what are you going to do now?

- Take a shower?
- A shower.

One winter evening,

Nicolas and I opened a letter
from the Trousseau Hospital.

"Dear Sir, Madam,

"Our tests
have unfortunately confirmed

"that your daughter
has Rett Syndrome."

We got on the internet,
with our hands shaking.

"An illness
of the central nervous system.

"Loss of acquired
cognitive and motor skills.

"Behavioral deterioration.

"Severe autistic symptoms."

The diagnosis hit us like a bomb,
in our living room.

We collapsed into each other's arms.

"What's happening to us, darling?"

Nicolas said, "This really isn't
what I wanted for us."

I couldn't speak.

The next day, we paced the corridors
at the Trousseau Hospital.

Nicolas shouted,

"It's disgraceful,
telling us that in a letter."

And it was disgraceful.
It was horrible.

Later, after months of waiting,

I went to an appointment
with a Rett Syndrome specialist.

During the appointment,

in front of Penelope,
the doctor said,

"You need to accept
that you've lost your child."

- Shall we go?
- Yes.

Here.

We needed some resources,
to commit to helping Penelope.

Penelope?

Are you looking at the boats?

Nicolas and I reached an agreement.

The boats.

I would stop making films.

I'd do anything to save our daughter.

OK.

And he would find a job
where he could make lots of money,

so we could fund our plans.

Suddenly
our pathways had branched off,

taking us far
from what we had anticipated.

Penelope became my mission.

In the morning, at breakfast,
Nicolas said,

"I'm going to jump off a cliff,
with Penelope."

In the afternoon,
we went out on our bikes.

Nicolas went riding out ahead.

I caught up with him,
he waited for me,

and I cried.

He said,
"This is beautiful. Do you like it?"

I said yes, with tears in my eyes.

He thought it was the wind
that was making me cry.

Then he sped off again

and, behind him,
I cried and cried and cried.

We each have our way of fighting it.

And all those questions,

swirling around my head,
like seagulls.

What is a life worth?

What is love worth?

That grandfather's
explaining everything.

I was scared of going back to Paris.

It was driving me crazy,

those psychologists,
stimulating Penelope so mechanically.

They didn't have
any clinical experience.

I was short of everything -

qualified personnel,

financial resources
and educational tools.

Back then,
my parents were living in New York.

I thought maybe
we could save Penelope in the USA.

We need...

We need to know exactly
what we could do in the USA.

Absolutely everything we can do -
the current research - everything.

And we'll come straight away.

We're ready.

We'll jump on a plane
and we'll go to see the specialists.

The people here
say there's nothing we can do.

We're sending messages and stuff,
but...

We'll come straight away,
as soon as we have an appointment.

OK.

Hey, Pelo's in New York!

All good, Pelo?

Are you OK?

Say something back, darling.

How are you doing?

Papa.

Yes.

"Everything's great, Mom."

I contacted Bridget Taylor,

the director at an ABA clinic,
in New Jersey.

She told me...

I liked that idea
that anything was possible.

Pelo!

I didn't tell Bridget
that Penelope had Rett Syndrome.

I think I wanted to see
what her diagnosis she'd make.

Not speaking those words,
"Rett Syndrome,"

allowed me to believe
that Penelope could get better.

Bridget could feel
that it was a touchy subject.

She moved on to something else.

Do you want the cartoon?

Yes, the cartoon.

She knew I needed to stay on my feet.

What do you want to be like?

A little one. Look.

I want to be big,
said the Little Princess.

"You are big,"
said the Little Prince.

I want cartoons.

After. We'll watch some afterwards.

A behavioralist, a reflexologist,

an osteopath, a magnetizer.

Eventually
we had had enough appointments.

We needed to catch our breath
and get a change of air.

I threw myself into the waves
and let out a shout.

You were running on the beach.

You were throwing sand
with mad energy.

I copied you.

You seemed surprised.

You stopped
and your eyes looked into mine.

In that frozen moment,
you said something to me,

something that I didn't understand.

A year after starting the ABA,

several people have left us,

have stopped working with Penelope.

Mylène, Jean-Claude, Céline.

Raphaël and Marine,
the sisters, are still with us.

Other people have joined us.

Elina...

Elina...

The Wimberts say
that Penelope's not doing so badly.

Faster than time...

Hair grows at a certain pace.
It's the same with this.

Every time,
we've mentioned carrots to you.

You have to do that.
You really do, take it from me.

Same for you.

Do what?

Carrot juice. Go right ahead.

What do you think about Penelope?

She's a nice little girl.

What do you think about Tomatis?

It's better with carrot juice.

There should be a carrot juice brand
called Tomatis.

And how do you feel,
listening to that music?

It gives me an erection,
under the blanket.

So you'd recommend Tomatis
to everyone.

Yes.

And how does Penelope react?

It calms her down.

It lets her engage with the world.

How do you mean?

Not to be scared of the world.

It comforts her.

I had become Penelope's second body.

She needed help
with all her everyday activities,

day and night.

Some nights, I'd just go to sleep,

leaving her to ransack the room,

rather than go in to her.

She even burst into the living room,

covered in excrement,
in her hair, her mouth - everywhere.

She needed a long shower.

We had to scrub her,
with several gloves

and use a fine-tooth comb

to get out the little bits,
stuck in her hair, like lice.

Then we had to wash and air the room

and light incense and candles.

Then I went back to bed.

Ask her!
Say you want to ride the bike!

She wants to ride, but she's shy.

- Why?
- I don't know.

The next day I went for coffee
with a friend who said,

"You need to breathe.
Go and do some yoga.

"You need to go out for a meal
and have a good bottle of Chablis,

"with some savory pastries, to start.

"You need to say, 'Life's good!'

"'This Chablis is great.'"

Penelope,
sometimes I've wanted to kill you.

And then I'd thank Medea,
for having done it.

Tatiana came along as a surprise,

sweeping all the sadness
out of her way.

When she was born,

I could feel that as a mom,
I'd care for her differently.

I'd just be there
to bring out what was already there.

That's happiness.

Come.

Come on, Tatiana.

Hello!

Several times,
I thought about miracles.

Are you dancing?

Go on, dance!

A miracle isn't
when something exceptional happens.

Great.

It's when everything's fine.

- Hi!
- Hi!

How are you?

Good.

This is going to be a school,
you know?

- A school?
- Yes.

For little kids.

For little kids like you -
or big kids like you.

No, I'm 10.

You're 10? Then you're really big.

Yes.

Littler kids than you.

My little sister is five.

Yeah?

- More like that.
- Yes.

It's a school
for kids with little problems.

Or big problems, really.

I visited a day hospital.

The users, as they were called,
were left to their own devices.

The care staff,
in their white tunics,

waited to see
what the children supposedly wanted.

I didn't want Penelope
to end up in a hospital.

I only saw one solution:
to set up a school.

With some friends,
we set up the MAIA,

the School for Autistic Child
Learning and Integration.

Look at me.

That's good.

Point to Daddy.

Point to Rafou.

Yes!

Look at me. Point to Daddy.

Yes, that's great!

Show me Mommy.

It's hard
to look at that footage now.

I seem like a prisoner
to my obsession with recovery.

I was determined to teach you
the so-called preschool requirements:

naming, categorizing,
language acquisition.

Look there.

I remember your face,
a few months after the school opened.

You were at the back
of the little classroom.

I saw your head loll back
and get stuck.

You had stopped breathing.

It went on long enough
for me to panic.

As the school was getting going,

you showed the first signs
of loss of learning.

You'd forget what you had learned
by the next day.

I thought of my grandmother.

She was right:
there's no point in school.

Give them to me.

Ah, that's good.

Pelo... come here.

Pelo, can you see?

Do you want to sleep,
under the blanket?

Under the blanket of Pelo.

Do you want to sleep, with the bears?

Pelo, catch.

Catch.

There you go. Throw it to Beatrice.

Now I'll throw it back to you.

Pelo. Catch.

Throw it again.

Pelo?

Today I just feel despondency
and despair.

I've been bringing Penelope
to Tomatis for four years now

and nothing's changed.

Now she has apnea.

She stops breathing
and throws her head back.

I can't bring myself to admit
that this illness is stronger than me

and stronger than anything I can do
to fight against it.

This illness is monstrous.

It's a monster.

I've spent four years of my life

doing nothing
but try to save Penelope.

But knowing that this illness
is stronger than us,

what does "saving" even mean?

Saving also means saving yourself.

Throughout all those years,
I stuck at it.

Looking back now,
it seems like an endless day.

I see myself as blind
to what lay in store for me.

And that obstinacy came back to me,
like a boomerang.

It's hard
to see yourself in the illusion.

It's as if it wasn't me.

When the diagnosis was given,

our family and friends were there,

shocked and stunned by the news.

They called, they came,
they took turns.

They couldn't believe their eyes.

Then the years went by

and that extraordinary life
became commonplace.

It was the life
of a family with a sick child.

But what did I want?

For them to provide support,
every day?

They had lives too,

with their own problems,
their jobs and children.

We'd see our neighbors,

who were used to seeing
Penelope cutting her breath off.

At first they thought she had asthma
and was out of breath.

But when they saw that every morning
her face turned blue,

they stopped asking questions.

It was a relief.

But it also seemed unacceptable,

for our own neighbors
to just get used to it.

The girl on floor 8 stops breathing.

The girl on floor 7
is learning the guitar.

That's how it is.

Are you OK?

Hey, come on, don't do that.

Shall we go out?

No, I want to go outside.

I hurt myself!

Come and see Daddy.

Come on, Pelo.

One day,
I went to buy shoes with Penelope.

The place was busy and hot.

Penelope was impatient,
circling around the store.

The salesman was crouched down,
looking for a pair of shoes.

Penelope came over to him
and hit him on the back.

The man turned around and said,

"She shouldn't be in here.
She should be in a hospital.

"I don't sell shoes
to disabled people."

We went out.

In the street, I went to pieces.

I thought about the war.

Another time, I ran into a neighbor.

"How long do they live?

"Aren't there places for them?"

I didn't say anything.

Five minutes later,
Penelope burst out sobbing.

Monsters should be accepted
and venerated,

those unusual, wild creatures
that frighten us,

who constantly remind us
that humans can be like this too.

A hundred years ago,
they were shown at fairs.

For a few pennies,

you could gaze
in revulsed fascination

at the fate you had escaped.

Now we shut those monsters away
in day hospitals,

where no one can pry,

with psychotropic drugs,
psychologists and psychiatrists,

who tell you
to accept the loss of your child.

That's why I'm filming Penelope
for you.

The camera is a shield
that protects us from people's gaze.

And it's the weapon
that helps me to hold out.

My friends said, "You have to accept
your daughter's illness.

"You've tried everything."

I should accept
my daughter's illness.

It sounded like brainwashing to me.

No, I shouldn't accept anything.

I wasn't done with the war.

Some evenings,
when I looked at Penelope,

I saw a sort of ectoplasm
that had lodged in her body,

that had gone in through her neck,

like a mad spirit
that had poisoned her.

Maybe some other sort of medicine
could help.

The West had lost
that link with the invisible.

Our rational vision of medicine

couldn't comprehend
the evil eating away at Penelope.

I had heard about a powerful shaman

that lived on the Tsaatan land,
in the north of Mongolia.

My family and I traveled out there.

We traveled the country,
to the Siberian border.

To get to the Tsaatan,
we had to cross the Taiga at night,

a sacred forest,
inhabited by bears and wolves.

I couldn't see anything.

All I could hear

was the sound of clogs,
sinking into the mud.

I held on to my horse's mane.

Some horses had fallen,
from mosquito bites.

And Penelope?

She had disappeared with the night.

What if she fell?

Why was I there?

For the miracle of healing?

In the early morning,
when we arrived,

I felt as if
I had gone through the looking glass.

Penelope went up to the reindeer
as if she had always known them.

I felt my inability to do something
that seemed so natural to her.

What would happen
if I went over to those animals?

Would they bite me?

As we moved toward the unknown,

alongside children
eating with their hands,

Penelope's disability
waned considerably.

Far from Paris

and the insistence
that people walk upright,

that they respect
codified rules and criteria.

Penelope seemed more relaxed.

Then it was time for the ceremony,
to call on the spirts.

The message was clear.

All I had to do was to carry on
being Penelope's mother.

My daughter had access
to an exceptional way of seeing.

Her senses were sharpened,
unlike anyone else's.

Penelope was my master.

She would make me see the world
differently.

But the idea of a being
that had inhabited her body

never left me.

Penelope.

You remind me of a black diamond,
repulsing every assault.

I've often thought
that nothing works for you.

You forced me
to keep looking elsewhere,

further on, for other solutions.

I took you to Turkey for two weeks,
for an introductory sports course.

I was alone,
in a hotel room in Istanbul.

I was in front of the mirror.

I took the time
to look at myself in detail.

I realized how much my body
had changed in seven years.

Seven years,
without looking at that body.

Life has slipped away
through the interstices of the war.

I looked sad.

But I didn't look like the image
that the mirror reflected back.

To reassure myself,
I picked up my phone.

I choose my best-looking profile.

My facial expression was neutral,
but not sad.

That's more what I looked like.

That's how I wanted to see myself.

Again.

Yes.

Pedal.

More.

Brake. Pedal.

Brake.

Let's start over.

Sit down.

Put your foot down. Off you go.

It's easy with your right foot.

Go ahead.

OK, third time lucky.
Put your foot on.

Put it on.

Now push.

No. Put your feet on the ground.

Put your foot on.

There we go. That's good. Great.

Now stop.

When we got back from Turkey,

we started developing sport
at the MAIA.

OK...

That became your main activity.

You could channel your movements

and be more in synch
with your environment.

Sport opened up a space for you
to be autonomous and to flourish.

Three! Two! One! Stop!

Reach for the sky.

I have contradictory feelings
about you.

I love you as you are,

but I like it
when you're like other people.

I loved seeing you run 10 kilometers,
without stopping,

with thousands of other people.

For an hour and a half,
you melted into the crowd,

no different from everyone else.

You were part of the social fabric,
which is essential.

It took years of endurance
and training to get there.

I'm proud.

And I can feel that you're proud to.

But marathons aren't my thing.

Something frightens me
about feeling pride

in an event that has everyone
doing the same thing.

I wasn't trying to save you anymore.

I wanted to surprise you.

That's one of the mysteries
that I felt with you.

It seems that you've seen
and heard everything.

That you know.

To surprise you,
we had to find a whale,

a monster big enough to amaze you.

We were on the boat.

They said, "Jump in, it's there!
Swim without making a sound!"

I dived

and I found myself face to face
with the whale and its calf.

It looked at me with its huge eye.

It seemed to be saying
it had been there for ages,

longer than me, than us, than humans.

It had been traveling the seas
for 50 million years.

That timescale
put my problems into perspective.

The whale and its calf.

Or maybe you.

You showed me the proof of the bond
between a mother and her daughter,

that unconditional love,
divested of any expectations...

that exists in the pure presence
of the moment.

Do you think it would like that?

Do you want to give that
to the sheep?

Give it to the sheep.

Give it to the sheep.

Give it the biscuit.

Go ahead, Pelo.

But if I look deep within myself,

in a little part of my mind,

there's still room
for a possible miracle.

It's like a little imp,

getting weaker over the years,

but perking up
whenever he's called on.

That's what people call hope,
for sure.

When you plow up the earth
with your hands,

it's like that's all you need

and that's good.

But if I leave you for hours,
I worry about your survival.

The earth covers you up

and you start
to melt into the scenery.

That makes my head spin.

I feel myself disappearing with you.

It's stronger than I am.

At some point,
I always interrupt you.

People describe your movements
as stereotyped,

but are they not like
two musical staves...

with your left hand marking time,
while your right tells the story?

Or are they not a dance,
creating an imaginary landscape?

Like Penelope, in the Odyssey,

you're weaving and unweaving
a vast cloth or your daily invention.

Is that one of your tricks?

But the analogy seems facile.

Such things are just
interpretative flights of fancy,

an insatiable thirst
to put things into words,

to search for symbols,
to find meaning.

No, as Fernand de Ligny would say,
those movements have no purpose.

They stand in
for nothing in particular.

Attention...

The ship's breaking up!

Let's get the boat! Quick, take it!

Not on Pelo.

Do you want to go for a walk
with Pelo or not?

- Yes.
- OK.

Pelo!

Come on.

Take a walk.

What's up, Enzo?

I can't see you.

Do you want to touch the camera?

- Max!
- Do you think that Max is in there?

Do you want to walk with Pelo?
Can you help here?

You like that.
Do you want to film Pelo?

Do you want to see how to do it?

No.

That's enough. Stop it.

No, no.

Come on.

Penelope. Enzo,

You're punks, you're anarchists,
you're lost causes.

I wonder
what we normopaths are lacking,

to live with you.

Pelo, go back to Enzo.

To accept you as you are.

I'm filming you, Pelo.

I don't know what else to do.
I can't sleep.

I can't sleep and nor can you.
I don't know what to do.

Pelo, stop grinding your teeth.

We have to sleep.

Sleep, darling.

You need to sleep.

Pelo.

Mom's filming.

Let's go to sleep now.

Go to sleep now, OK?

I'm going to bed. You go to sleep.

Shall we go to sleep, Pelo?

I'll switch the camera off.

Pelo, you didn't sleep last night.

Go to bed.

Look, the sun's coming up.

Do you think it'll be a nice day?
It looks like it will.

OK, see you later.

I'm going back to sleep too.
See you later.

You didn't sleep for two weeks.

I tried to rest in the morning.

I could feel
the ground sinking beneath me

and the ceiling spinning around.

I took a shower.

I pinched myself, to feel my body.

No, I hadn't gone mad.
I was still real.

But I had gone beyond a limit.

My body was giving out.

Pelo, Patrice is coming this morning.

Your grandfather.

He's going to take you for a walk
and I'm going to sleep.

And then Marie's coming.

Your aunt.

She'll take you for another walk.

Do you want to go to the park?

And Tatiana will come back
in the early afternoon.

She went to dance, with some friends.

From that day onward,
I couldn't live with you anymore.

That really shook me up.

I needed to reconnect to my body.

For us to be
two separate bodies again.

Robert Gillan
Subtitling: Hiventy by TransPerfect