A Week's Vacation

Laurence, a thirty-one-year-old teacher in Lyon, stops one day in the middle of her classroom and realises she cannot go on. Her doctor signs her off for a week. For that week she does not teach; she only looks: at her friends, her family, her partner Pierre, the city and her own life. The questions are simple and unanswered: will she stay in the job, does she want a child. Bertrand Tavernier moves the film along in small touches without staging big events, and films Lyon as a place he knows rather than as a backdrop. Nathalie Baye's performance is both exhausted and stubborn; the woman does not break, she just stops and looks. Michel Descombes, played by Philippe Noiret, is the same character from Tavernier's first film, The Clockmaker of Saint-Paul. It competed at Cannes in 1980.