Le Démon de midi (2005) Directed by Marie-Pascale Osterrieth
Comedy / Drama
aka: The Demon Stirs
Film Synopsis
Anna and Julien are an ordinary-looking Parisian couple who have enjoyed
the most harmonious of love affairs for fifteen years. In this time,
they have not only built a happy home together, they have also brought up
a darling little boy. Life could not have been kinder to them.
But then, at the age when the male menopause begins to kick in, Anna realises
that Julien no longer feels for her as he once did. It becomes apparent
to her that he is in love - but not with her.
This revelation is one that both disgusts and shocks Anna, as it is the last
thing she would have expected at their stage in their marriage. Julien
finally confides in his wife that he has found himself another woman and
is presently caught up in the most intense of love affairs. Her husband's
unwarranted infidelity is something that Anna finds difficult to accept at
first but, for the sake of her son, she knows she has to see it through and
not allow her emotions to get the better of her. In the end, contrary
to her earlier fears, she finds she can even laugh it off...
Franz Kafka's letters to his fiancée Felice Bauer not only reveal a soul in torment; they also give us a harrowing self-portrait of a man appalled by his own existence.
In the 1920s French cinema was at its most varied and stylish - witness the achievements of Abel Gance, Marcel L'Herbier, Jean Epstein and Jacques Feyder.