La reine blanche (1991)

In her youth, Liliane Soulas won a local beauty title: Queen of the Nantes Carnival. Appearing in the parade the day after the election, “all blonde in a (sumptuous) white dress,” she made such an impression that she became known forever as the White Queen. Two childhood friends, Yvon Legaloudec and Jean Ripoche, were madly in love with her and competed for her affection. But suddenly, on the morning of the carnival parade that was to celebrate Liliane, Yvon boarded a ship without warning anyone or giving the slightest explanation. Liliane therefore married her remaining suitor, Jean Ripoche, a worker for her father, who was a plumber by trade. In Trentemoult, in the suburbs of Nantes, Liliane and Jean live with their four children and Lucien, Liliane’s father, who, widowed and elderly, has handed the family business over to his son-in-law. They enjoy the happiness and prosperity of France’s new middle class during the postwar boom known as the Trente Glorieuses: it is 1960, and twenty years have passed since Liliane was elected carnival queen. Jean has grown Lucien’s small business and now sells bathtubs, a luxury and comfort item at the time, which he predicts will soon be found in every French home. He devotes all his free time to building a new float with Lucien each year for the carnival parade, carrying on that tradition too, while Liliane, cold and distant, cannot find fulfillment either as a woman or in her marriage. One evening, during a family dinner, the two younger boys snicker about two new classmates because, incongruously, they are “bamboulas” with names that sound very Breton. Their parents immediately reprimand them for their inappropriate remarks and, out of curiosity, ask what the two new pupils are called. The boys innocently say the name Legaloudec. All at once, memories come flooding back for Jean, Liliane, and her father. Seeing their dismayed expressions, the children ask who this famous Legaloudec is and why his name has affected them so much. Instead of answering, the adults wonder whether this really is the Legaloudec they are all thinking of—the one who would now be back in town after so many years away, having sent no word at all in the meantime. Over the next few days, it is confirmed that Yvon Legaloudec has indeed returned to settle in Trentemoult after his long travels. He is married to a beautiful woman from the French West Indies, and they have three mixed-race children. The two families get in touch and try to become friends. Yvon’s wife, who knows nothing about her husband’s past, is delighted to finally have friends in a town she does not know and tries to be as welcoming as possible to the Ripoche family. The eldest daughters in the two families, who are the same age, quickly become close and admire one another, while the boys constantly quarrel. Everyone seems happy about the reunion except Liliane, who looks glum. Yvon Legaloudec is bursting with enthusiasm. He tells stories of his life as a wanderer and talks to the Ripoche family as if they had always been close friends, despite his many years of absence and silence. But little by little, he becomes increasingly insistent, causing scenes and threatening Lucien. Jean, who has taken up building the float on which the Queen of the Nantes Carnival will ride, has chosen Guadeloupe as this year’s theme. To seal their friendship, and even though the float is supposed to remain a secret until the big day, Jean’s eldest daughter, Annie, shows it to Mireille, Yvon’s daughter. Having thus learned the float’s theme, Yvon persuades Lucien to show it to him by threatening to talk about the past. At a Sunday lunch at the Legaloudec home, with both families present, Yvon raises his glass and proposes a toast to their two queens. Stung in his pride, Jean retorts that he sees only one queen at the table. Yvon provocatively replies that Jean’s carnival float has given him an idea and announces that he is going to enter his daughter Mireille in the contest. Lunch descends into an argument, and the entire Ripoche family leaves at once. In a rage, Jean destroys his float, then sets about building a new one with a North Pole theme to thwart Yvon’s plans. He begins camping out “in the hangar” so he can be on site to work on the new float. This is the moment Liliane’s father chooses to try to clear the air with his daughter. He shamefully confesses that he and his late wife, disapproving of Yvon at the time because he was not a serious young man, had paid off a large gambling debt he had incurred among disreputable people. In return, they had demanded that he take that infamous ship to the islands, while deliberately keeping Jean and Liliane in the dark about the scheme they had used to make Yvon leave. Angry, distraught, and deeply unhappy at these belated revelations, Liliane collapses, feeling that in some way her own parents had betrayed and sold her. When Yvon comes to apologize the next day for the scene at lunch, Liliane is no longer cold and welcomes him calmly. They talk about the past and Yvon’s departure. Yvon tells her that although he had feelings for her, he loves his wife, Annabelle, and his children, and that their story belongs to a long-vanished time in their youth, freeing Liliane’s tormented conscience. She leaves and then puts on for him the sumptuous white dress she has not worn for twenty years and which Yvon had never seen her wear, as a remembrance of and a mourning for their troubled past. Believing that she too owes Yvon a debt, she gives him the white dress so he can persuade his daughter to enter the carnival queen contest, something Liliane had opposed. Rid of the dress, Liliane draws a line under her painful past and begins to open up to others, especially Jean, who fails to understand what she is trying to tell him. Thinking that Liliane has been unfaithful to him with Yvon, he packs his bags. Liliane tells him she loves him. Jean retorts that it took Yvon’s arms for her to realize it, and Liliane replies that Yvon never touched her. Jean leaves the house, convinced she has chosen him out of desperation rather than love. To everyone’s surprise, Mireille Legaloudec wins the title of Queen of the 1960 Carnival. Her father, Yvon, then begins boasting in front of everyone about what he considers his own victory. Out of spite, Jean takes the same ship Yvon took twenty years earlier, leaving Nantes with plans to travel the world as his former rival once did, after congratulating Mireille and apologizing to her. Distraught by his sudden departure and finally freed from the past, Liliane confesses to her father that it took Yvon’s return for her to understand that she loves Jean, something the shadows surrounding Yvon’s sudden and total disappearance had prevented. She loves Jean and wants to go after him, but the next ship for the West Indies will not sail for a month, and Jean has left with the household savings. Her father reassures her, saying that a month is not so long, that it may be just the time Jean and she need, that their eldest daughter Annie is now old enough to help look after the youngest, and that he still has some savings so Liliane can go and find “her” Jean.