Céleste

The year is 1914 and the men have gone to the war. Marcel Proust takes on an attendant. The person he takes on is Céleste Albaret. She stays at his side for more than eight years. She is there when he dies. The routine never changes in all that time. Céleste enters the room only when he rings. She sleeps between nine in the morning and three in the afternoon. She waits awake through the night, because he writes at night. The work is not only service, though. Proust has her tell him about her childhood. What she tells sets his own remembering in motion. He does not hide from her how he manipulates the people he means to write. Céleste listens to all of it. He is racing death to finish his book. Eva Mattes and Jürgen Arndt appear in the hundred and seven minute film, a German production Percy Adlon finished in 1981.