Requiem

Paul, a French writer in Lisbon, meets various people from his past, and those meetings bring forgotten memories to the surface. The film builds no plot; it moves through encounters that follow one another inside a single day. Whether some of the people he meets are alive is left uncertain, and that uncertainty is never explained. The account walks the city in real locations through a hot and empty afternoon. The conversations are held long; the weight lies not in event but in what is said. The writer’s own reckoning is not closed by the end. Francis Frappat and Andre Marcon appear in Alain Tanner’s hundred and four minute film, completed in 1998.