Arnaud Desplechan's L'Aimée | The Beloved (2006)

This is a (sort of) documentary concerning, as so many of Desplechin's films do, the family. Here he returns to his old home in Roubaix (Nord) to talk to his father Robert who has sold the house. Essentially it's the story of Arnaud Desplechin's paternal grandmother Thérèse, who died at the age of thirty-six from tuberculosis, when Robert was only two years old. Robert is preparing to leave, Arnaud is (as usual) smoking very heavily, and the two just talk about Thérèse, reconstruct her from old photos, a painting of her, etc.

As breaks in the dialogue between son and father, there are also shots of Arnaud's brother Fabrice with his nephews inside the house. An intensely autobiographical film which shows the relationship between autobiography and the 'fictional' films of Desplechin which interweave autobiographical content.