Monsieur Max (2007)

On [date unspecified], the Gestapo arrests Max Jacob. Through numerous flashbacks, the film takes us through the poet’s memories, across different eras, and introduces us to famous painters, poets, and writers who were friends of Max Jacob, going as far back as forty years earlier, when he lived at the Bateau-Lavoir with Pablo Picasso. Max Jacob shares confidences, enchantments, and escapades from interwar Paris particularly with Jean Cocteau and Sacha Guitry. He is then taken to Drancy. The story is built around a fictional plotline involving a young woman named Alice, a little orphan who was raised for a time by Max Jacob before he lost sight of her. Alice goes so far as to have herself deported voluntarily in order to find the poet, while Guitry and Cocteau are slow to intervene. Max Jacob’s feeling that his friends have abandoned him—he will die before he is rescued—echoes the feeling the orphan girl had experienced as a child.