Wall Engravings

Guy Gilles's 1968 French film is built on Jeanne looking back at the man she loved. Jean was a young man who could not accept the world as it was and always wanted to leave; the story carries his absence as a secret, and the viewer understands it before she does. Gilles was a director who stayed at the edge of the new wave, and his form is his own: frozen photographs, abrupt shifts of colour, fragments of song and letters read aloud. The story does not run straight but is broken like a memory. Macha Méril's performance is calm. The film went unseen for a long time and the director's work was only reassessed later. The formal scattering is deliberate. Who it's for: viewers curious about the strand of French cinema outside its familiar names. Who it's not for: anyone wanting an orderly narrative, or avoiding themes of loss and death.