Narrative, 2007
Director: Claude Miller
France/ French, Yiddish with subtitles
105 minutes
This truly gripping film is about a Jewish boy living in post World War ll Paris. As a child he has an idyllic view of his parents' life and relationship. He also has an imaginary older brother who is perfect in every way he is not. As a teenager he discovers a very deep and haunting buried truth that ruins the first fantasy and explains the other.
This story and its characters are based on true events and the director uses an interesting visual technique by showing the past in color and the present where the boy has grown up and is now dealing with his parents as an adult in black and white, thus putting the focus on the key to the story – the past.
It is a story of passion, desire, coveting, guilt, pain, secrets, and lies, and the inevitable dysfunction that each and every one of those things causes no matter how far you try to bury them or how pretty a picture you present on the outside. A secret will always find its way out.
Lucy Cruell