Plot
Hélène, a widow who runs an antique business from her own apartment in Boulogne-sur-Mer, is visited by a past lover, Alphonse. Her stepson, Bernard, is tormented by the memory of a girl named Muriel whom he has participated in torturing while doing military service in Algeria.
The story takes place over 15 days in September–October 1962. (The screenplay provides specific dates and times for each scene, but these are not apparent in the film.) An extended sequence takes place on the first day (a section lasting about 45 minutes: the introductions of Alphonse and his 'niece' Françoise to Hélène and Bernard, and their first meal together). Another long sequence takes place on the last day (the Sunday lunch and its revelations, and the scattering of the principal characters in their different directions). The intervening days are represented in a series of fragmented scenes, which are chronological but seldom consecutive, and the passage of time is blurred.
Read more about this topic: Muriel (film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
““The plot thickens,” he said, as I entered.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)