The shamefully little-known Jean-Paul Civeyrac has since 1996 been quietly building one of the most intriguing bodies of work in contemporary French cinema. His exquisitely lyrical films concern themselves with blurring the lines between the material world and physical representations of mental or spiritual states.

In All the Fine Promises, Marianne (Jeanne Balibar) discovers that her deceased father had a mistress he referred to in letters as his one true love. Having recently ended her own relationship, Marianne impulsively seeks out this mysterious other woman in order to bequeath to her a box of her father’s personal memorabilia, and to better understand their relationship. Told in the director’s usual deceptively simple style, the film becomes a treatise on love, memory and the relationship between the two. (Notes by Kevin Coyne.)

(Prix Jean Vigo 2003)