Appointment in Bray

André Delvaux’s 1971 film adapts Julien Gracq’s story King Cophetua, and Delvaux worked with the author to find a way of making it filmable. It is 1917 and the war is going on. Julien, being from Luxembourg, does not have to fight and is studying piano in Paris. His friend Jacques, also a musician and now a fighter pilot at the front, invites him to spend a few days at his family’s empty house at Bray. The housekeeper who lets him in does not speak; Jacques is late, and Julien has to wait. The waiting turns into remembering the years before the war, Jacques, and his girlfriend Odile. Anna Karina plays the housekeeper. It won the Louis Delluc prize.