Patrice Molinard

An early example of ultra-realism, this movie contrasts the quiet, bucolic life in the outskirts of Paris with the harsh, gory conditions inside the nearby slaughterhouses. Describes the fate of the animals and that of the workers in graphic detail.

A young man goes looking for work on a cold, rainy weekday morning in Paris. He buys an umbrella for one franc and finds happiness with a beautiful dancer, who seeks shelter under his umbrella in the rain.

In 1743, in the French countryside, a strange epidemic deserted the region. 200 years later, a young woman wakes curiously languid after a restless night. Her husband received a letter a few hours later asking him to go to a remote place for business, where he would have to spend the night. If he succeeds in reassuring his young wife, who has a presentiment of being separated for the first time from him, the first night spent in his host's house will topple everything.

The journey of initiation of a man and his lifeless child, from the anonymous crowds of Paris to the banks of the Oise, reinvented in the style of the Styx.