Die Reise nach Lyon (1981)

Elisabeth is a young historian. She has travelled from Germany, where she lives with her husband and young daughter, to Lyon to set out on a “search for traces.” In 1844, a few months before her death, the women’s rights activist Flora Tristan lived in Lyon for a while. Elisabeth is not conducting historical research in Lyon in the conventional sense. “I don’t want to research things one already knows in advance,” she says once, in a conversation with an antiquarian. Alone, she wanders the city again and again, equipped only with her notebook and a small tape recorder. In the sound of her “own footsteps,” she thinks she can hear “the echo of Flora’s footsteps,” “a century and a half later.” Elisabeth finds few people to talk to in Lyon. She grows closest to the landlady of an old little bistro. Once, Elisabeth asks her about a plaque beside the entrance commemorating the execution of eighty Jews in 1943. Alongside this historical dimension of the film, there is always also the question of where Elisabeth is in her life at that moment—whether she will separate from her husband for good. When she reads a letter from him at a table in that bistro, tears come to her eyes. There are small hints in the scenes that she is pregnant. Once she asks the landlady for several gherkins, saying they are “for a pregnant friend”; later she suddenly has to vomit violently. Another man appears. She had already noticed him in the breakfast room of the hotel where she is staying, when he cast interested glances in her direction. Later she sees him again, “by chance—perhaps I should have become a private detective.” She follows him into an empty apartment, and after exchanging a few words, they kiss. But after that, the man is not seen again in the film.