Des jours et des nuits (2005)

This is the story of a man who enjoys a degree of success in both his material and emotional life: he is a prosperous businessman with a charming, loving wife, and they have an adult child who is already settled. But soon, every night, he begins dreaming of a woman who would be his “complementary soul,” or his other half—a kind of idealized double. One might quote Verlaine here: “I often dream this strange and penetrating dream / Of an unknown woman, whom I love and who loves me, / And who each time is neither quite the same / Nor quite someone else, and loves and understands me.” Gradually, this dream becomes an obsession. Convinced that she is not merely a dream, but a real, living person somewhere, he sets out to find her. Although he lives in the Paris region, a whole series of “synchronicities” or “happy coincidences” leads him as far as Greece. Before long, he finds himself on the trail of an archaeologist excavating sites more than 3,000 years old: it is her. Stéphane Freiss and Caterina Murino then make an ideal couple on screen, living out their romantic love story amid a blend of reality and fantasy. But all this has consequences for his family life, and, at his wife’s initiative, he is admitted to hospital for psychological problems. He eventually escapes from this confinement and sets off to find the woman he loves... Plato seems close at hand, and the themes of eternal life and reincarnation are strongly suggested. The film is conceived as an initiatory journey toward absolute love.