It’s 1947, and Madeleine (Anaïs Demoustier, Smoking Causes Coughing), a single mother of a five-year-old son Daniel, waitresses in a Normandy hotel-restaurant. On the beach one day, she meets François (Vincent Lacoste), a student from a wealthy family, and they fall in love. Each with their own secret, they will build a life and a love together against all odds, confronting the trauma, shame and struggles of social and sexual convention in the 1950s and ’60s. Writer-director Katell Quillévéré’s complex, romantic post-war tale is inspired by her grandmother, who had a child with a German officer during WWII – a secret she kept all her life.

Notes by Marie-Pierre Richard

Screening as part of the IFI French Film Festival, November 15 – 26.