"ROMAMOR Filmed Letter From Berlin" "In the beginning, there's a guy, we can't see him, we'll never see him much, but he's there, his eye glued to the camera." "It's me." "My name's Mark Spiegelmann, I'm 40 years old, and I'm remembering a woman and two cities:" "Sandra, Rome and Berlin." "You, me, Rome and Berlin." "These images of snow and all those that follow, are ones you've never seen before." "I've been working hard on this film, so I know them by heart." "By filming the square, and the snow, so close to spring," "I thought we could tell the story like that, in one fell swoop." "Our story." "From the first look, to the falling snow." "The encounter, our love, the trip to Berlin," "New Year in Rome..." "And the end." "A love story and the cities, accompanied by music, accidents, hope, sadness and forgotten things." "But I don't know how to do that." "Since I've been filming, it's only because of bits, and pieces, parts and fragments, that I've captured on occasion the impression of finding my traces." "A hint of truth." "That's how it is." "A street in Rome, leads me to a square in Berlin." "The image of a window reminds me of your face, months later in Paris." "Your face again and again." "Your face captured for a moment, but lost today." "I've been in Berlin for a few days." "Without my camera." "It's snowing here too." "It's very cold." "I'm staying with Wilhelm, my cousin." "He's my only family member left in Germany." "I'm editing this film in an old cinema studio that's about to be demolished." "Sometimes, when I grant myself a break," "I visit huge empty, haunted hangars." "I encounter the last remaining ghosts of the stars." "I can see the remains of décors that are now ruins." "It's a city within the city, it's totally imaginary." "Time had preserved this place." "Unfortunately now that's finished." "I needed to be far from Paris to finish this film, to look at these images again." "Berlin was perfect for that." "I'm alone here." "My parents spent their childhood here." "I spent time wandering through the streets, last summer, looking for traces of them, and thinking of you." "I think of you all the time, Sandra." "The train that takes me back to Paris." "A few images of trees whizzing past." "A fugitive reflection of my face in the window." "Accompanying my departure from Germany, is Marlene Dietrich's voice." "A song coming from the next wagon." "I'm not bringing much back from this trip." "Around fifteen film rolls." "An ambiguous liking for this city that refused to see my parents grow up." "Berlin chopped up then repaired, tragic and musical, remains a stranger to me." "It's by train also, that my father and his family, fled before the worst happened, because of ten bricks thrown through the Spiegelmann pharmacy window." "I see them, they invaded a wagon with their cases, they wonder what Paris is like, what awaits them." "My father is standing in the corridor, he's gazing out the window." "He's 10 years old." "What does he see?" "What does he understand?" "He doesn't realize yet just how lucky he is." "I would have liked a photo to capture that trip that begins but doesn't end in Paris." "A photo that talks to me, no one but me." "The scent of those days, the real weight of those last looks at a country they'd never want to see again." "Two months earlier, I didn't even know you and Paris was difficult for me despite the sunshine." "I was ugly, stupid, fat, blind, and half-deaf, breathless." "I was running away from my friends and my work." "eating too much, sleeping a lot." "I no longer liked my room." "There was nothing to understand." "I didn't understand." "Things had changed a lot in my life over these past five years." "It happens to everyone, having the impression of waking up one morning without a story, because the woman we love has gone, because work is going badly." "Because we've already seen the sea or we're getting older and don't believe our own lies so much." "The only hitch, despite the fact I'd stopped finishing my films, through habit I continued using my camera" "That day, the Saint Sulpice square had a Roman feel to it, but the bench wasn't free." "You were still, a blurred silhouette, plunged in a book, tranquil and silent." "From a distance you looked like an old friend." "Afterwards, it happened so slowly, you didn't even notice." "I don't know why I made the first move, nor what I said, why you answered and smiled at me." "How did it come about that I suddenly wanted only you on camera?" "Thinking about it today, you must have taken me for a madman." "You were probably right." "But at that very moment, my heart was beating like crazy and I wasn't thinking" "There was something in your eyes." "And something in mine too." "Your face, this light." "I simply wanted to make the moment last." "To see me approach you." "So, I talked and talked, rambling, talking about anything and everything." "Be a good sport, look at me." "I said:" "Do you work around here?" "What book are you reading?" "Turn your head slightly." "I like it here." "I said: can I buy you a drink?" "My name's Mark." "I already loved you, but you didn't know it." "Ok, you're right, maybe that's not exactly what happened." "I'm exaggerating a little and lying a little too." "Please forgive me, after all, that day you didn't know why or how it happened either." "The angel of victory." "The Brandenburg gate." "Unter den Linden." "Thanks to my mother and father, I've known about these places since my childhood but I'd never seen them." "Their names intrigued me." "They echo in me like the lyrics of a secret song." "I waited a long time to do this trip, I hesitated." "The abrupt changes that took place in East Germany, helped me decide." "The Berlin wall fell the year before we met." "That year, unlike the others, I experienced it through Wilhelm's letters." "He invited me to see it with my own eyes." "I went in August, a month after we met at Saint Sulpice." "I took with me a plethora of old questions, about my mother and father and their childhood there." "I also took with me a curious dream:" "spending a night in your arms... and my mother waking me to explain that this trip is futile and that Berlin doesn't exist." "That the city of Berlin never existed." "I held onto another promise." "That of another journey, with you, this time, to your city," "Rome, a city I didn't know." "I only spent three weeks in Berlin." "Wilhelm, my cousin, was my guide on impromptu walks." "He loved to take the overhead tube train." "I found him more taciturn than in his letters, but that didn't bother me." "I could simply let myself be overtaken, by the present uncertainty of a future reunification." "And at the same time inventing family memories out of nothing." "As if, just by wandering in the shadow of these buildings, under their balconies alongside the wastelands, I could feel, deep within, my mother and father's childhood, in Berlin before the war." "The childhood of a Jew, carefree, threatened and saved in the nick of time by exile and luck." "The strangest of all, is that to be truthful," "I hardly know anything." "Neither where exactly they lived, what games they played nor what they dreamt of." "My father is a man of few words and never spoke of it." "My mother was still very young when her father thought, in 1932, that it'd be better to leave." "The only thing I really remember is a photo, yellowed with age, that lay around the house for years." "I think it was dated, 1927 or 1928." "All my father's family were on it, posing regally in front of the Spiegelmann pharmacy on the day it opened." "It was a great day for all of them, you can imagine it." "Berlin shone." "This lost photo played a fundamental role in my desire to make films, I think." "That's how the days passed by." "Late at night, we went back to Wilhelm's, after spending time in some bar." "That was the time he was the most talkative." "I really liked the way he looked and the melancholic love he felt for his city" "Stuck in the heart of an invisible country." "His calm, slow voice, told a whole host of short stories." "Stories of the East, stories of the West." "Stories of walls and ruins." "During those moments, he sometimes asked about Paris, about the film I was making." "One night, I told him how we'd met." "It was the first time I'd told anyone about you." "At night, when I went back to my room, when I got into bed, alone, between the sheets, other thoughts kept me awake." "All the letters you received were written during those moments, in the yellow light, with the window open, listening to the nights which were quiet and calm." "I don't really remember, but I must have written nonsense in those letters, you know better than me." "There is one that I remember tonight, that I don't deny because it must be closer to the truth, now than then." "It basically said the same as all these images, in which you appear and disappear, from Paris to Rome, from yesteryear." "Sometimes it's sad to come across a face and all of a sudden want that it love you." "Are you smiling?" "Don't deny it." "I know you by heart for that." "Spiegelmann talks about his old friend Miss Melancholy and it makes you laugh." "You know me by heart too." "I wasn't sleeping much, and at every instant, stronger than the rest, your image came to me." "I'd forget the tourists determined to grab their part of the fallen symbol, like the impossible memories of the childhood of my parents." "I'd forget everything was changing here." "With hurt and hope." "And quite normally,thankfully, I plunged back into the heart of our love story." "In the end, it made it difficult for me to film." "Since we met, you'd become my main subject." "In Berlin, often when I was about to shoot," "I'd get the strange feeling that your sihouette was missing." "And, in the last days, I hardly filmed anything, except this walk amongst the phantoms of the Weissensee cemetery." "Not far from Wannsee where, in 1942, the "final solution" was decided." "Last sequence in Berlin." "These windows, these façades that you are seeing now, are in Kreuzberg, the area abundant with squatters and Turks." "Wilhelm thinks the Spiegelmann pharmacy was around here." "I would have liked him to be right, because it's what I prefer in Berlin." "I film as I dream a little." "I tell myself, one day maybe, I'll show these images to my father, who will recognize a tiny bit of a street or the sky." "A glimpse of the former Kreuzberg." "His face would light up." "He'd remember the scents and sounds of spring and winter." "Laughing, he'd start telling stories about the family." "Ordinary stories of honeymoons, work, disputes and love that will become precious moments to me." "His voice would tremble slightly, the names would flow gently:" "Joseph, Rachel, Petra, Deborah," "Mandel, Sarah, and Max." "There were many Spiegelmanns on opening day, in front of their pharmacy." "The photo I know, colours somewhat." "Men and women begin to move." "They're speaking German." "They are Jewish." "Berliners for four generations." "I hardly know anything, but I have the feeling that I know them better, simply because I invented their phantoms in Berlin." "I didn't come for nothing." "On my return, we met on the platform." "You came to pick me up, you seemed happy." "We ate near the station, in a Thai restaurant." "After coffee, I spread a map of Berlin over the table," "I pointed out streets and plazas and the open air tube." "You listened to me." "There were spots of green and blue paint on your hands." "The next morning, you admitted that you'd missed me too." "You showed me the painting you'd been working on." "An empty bench on the square at Saint Sulpice, close to the fountain." "Autumn came quickly." "a brief and exhilarating season during which I spent most of my time getting to know every bit of your body and soul." "Neither of us spoke really of love, not with words anyway." "You prefered silence, glances and gestures." "I didn't dare." "I never filmed at your house." "You didn't want me to, ever." "I know there was defence and prudishness in your gentle refusal." "I know there was something powerful, voracious and derisive in my fury, when outside, to constantly capture you on film." "It annoyed you often, it suprised you a little." "Laughing, you called me a voyeur and a vampire, but you were disturbed by it." "I ignored your mocking, but in my head, I asked myself the obsessive, precise question:" "What made me film you with such frenetic, instinctive impatience and continue the game that had begun at the square at Saint Sulpice?" "We talk about the trip." "I film you at the window." "I feel your intimidation." "Are you ok?" "What are you doing?" "I'm filming you, of course." "Stand a little more in the light." "Yes, but how are you filming me?" "Well you know, I'm filming you..." "as it comes." "I'm not used to being filmed." "Try to be natural." " It's easy." " What does natural mean to you?" "Being yourself." "Stand in the sunlight, please." "That's right." "Do you feel natural there?" "What are you looking at?" "I'm looking at... the street," "Paris." "The roof tops?" " Is it pretty?" " Yes it is." " Beautiful rooftops." " Parisian rooftops." "Travelling shot of you in front of the rooftops." "Ouch, I hit my arm." "Sandra, I love you." " What?" " Nothing, concentrate on the rooftops." "One beautiful October morning, leaving your house," "I wanted to find the light like when we met." "It was different, but beautiful all the same." "It was already the beginning of our trip." "Remember, this trip was your idea, because of Berlin." "Because Rome was your Berlin." "The city where your parents were born and that they wanted to leave, as mine had left Berlin, for the same reasons." "The city was already familiar to you, as you'd often been during your fine arts studies." "But it was different." "You didn't see it as you'd hoped to this time, through the eyes of your mother and father, children of Trastevere." "For me, Rome was none of that." "But just a lot of pleasant, sumptuous clichés." "Cinema clips." "A huge Trevi fountain." "But I was happy and impatient to come here with you." "October..." "November..." "December." "We saw each other mainly at night." "You were working at an exhibition and it was rare you had time for me in the day." "I spent my days waiting for you." "I spent hours and hours wandering the streets and sitting in cafés." "It wasn't unpleasant." "You'd regularly be late for our meetings." "I loved it when you jumped in my arms, all breathless and laughing." "I had you all to myself and I made the night last." "We went to the cinema and to restaurants in Barbès, Jaurès or Belleville." "I have so many memories of that, they flood my head." "They are the moments I cherish most of the autumn." "Then there's your surprised face looking at my jumpers that made me want to film the scene again one quiet afternoon." "A little before leaving, I had a strange dream:" "I was looking through a photo album there were three or four to a page, they were mainly photos of you." "I turned the pages one by one, to look at them carefully." "The photos gradually got darker until they were all black." "At the end, there was just one page left I didn't dare turn it." "I never had the dream again, like you sometimes do, but the memory of it haunted me a while, during the first days in Rome." "The day before we left, we slept at my house, and for once, it was you who couldn't sleep a wink." "I'd never seen you so impatient." "On the train, you talked of other trips, other trains, other men." "The countryside sped by as quickly as your stories." "I simply listened and watched you." "Once over the border, you become stony silent." "Then you chain smoked, as you checked the platforms for the name of every city we went through." "I liked seeing you like that and being at your side." "I felt that I hadn't missed any images of the trip." "Nevermind if some were mere clichés." "Today, I must admit I'm clueless." "Images fly by." "You are walking." "You are laughing." "You stop." "You are watching me," "You are here." "The sky hasn't changed." "The ochre walls of the buildings haven't changed either." "It's really you." "It's really Rome." "And it's my way of looking at things." "Everything seems intact, so entirely that I feel like I'm still there with you, near the steps on the Piazza di Spagna, waiting for nightfall." "But who knows?" "It doesn't take much to betray an image." "At certain moments, when I watched you wandering around these monuments or the secret streets that bewitched us." "I couldn't stop thinking about the erased images of my dream." "So, the strange determination with which I filmed you, my desire to capture your face, no matter what:" "the joy, the fatigue, the light, the slightest echo of these days and nights, seemed destined for failure." "For a few moments, I stopped believing." "But that didn't last long." "Quickly, thanks to you, a giggle, a slip, a hint of surprise in your eyes a shadow on your cheek, gave me my confidence back." "Bedroom and window." "We'd been lent a small apartment in the Trastevere area." "You already knew it." "I liked its light." "This is where you stayed when you were a student or on holiday in Rome." "Normally, your youngest cousin lives in the apartment, Romano." "He's kindly left the premises to leave us alone during the entire trip." "I think your whole family knows:" "" Sandra is in Rome with a lover, no one is to disturb them. "" "So we settled in, and made ourselves at home." "It's the first time we've lived together under the same roof." "We stay inside for hours, leaning on the window or lying on the bed." "I discover gestures I'd never seen you make before." "Rome makes you light spirited and chatty." "I amuse myself by filming you as if you're a star." "It doesn't take long for me to fall in love with the room and the bed, the mirror and the window, the narrow street down below." "The air is soft." "I don't need anything." "My eyes sparkle, burning with fever." "Each moment is a deep heartbeat." "We walked a lot." "We went here and there, not always knowing where, at all hours of the day." "We had our regular bars, and our favourite bridge on the river, and some street corners where anything can happen." "Sometimes, I imagine that elsewhere or in another era, we'd have been 2 children, familiar with every plaza or square in the town, and that our laughter would echo across each side of the Tiber." "Or two sailors both foreign and delighted, a little drunk and lost, swearing friendship for life that they'd never forget." "The truth is that I know you a little better," "I discover more about you during this Roman holiday and naively, it opens my eyes." "All these walks make us love Rome." "At the same time, my desire for you becomes clearer." "It's sad and fragile like a reason to live." "You know that." "When I'm in your arms, when you wake me in the morning or scratch my back." "I know you know and you don't doubt it." "Do you really know what you have given me?" "This strange joy to live." "The crazy sweetness of forgetting the future, the confused feeling, of believing an instant, that it's almost the same what you've loved, and what I've lost." "We lived one day at a time, as if in transit." "From time to time, Romano visited us." "He made me think of Wilhelm." "They both took pleasure in speaking of their city." "Romano liked you and he was in love with you, once as a child." "Maybe that's why we got along." "He was the only true witness to our love." "If only for that, I know that for all those I met in Rome, he's the only one I'll remember." "Beautiful days succeeded one another." "Rich with simple visions." "I let myself believe that these banal, clear moments, helped our love find a strange serenity." "But I couldn't tell you that." "I don't know if you could read my dreams." "My only story and my greatest despair, is what you'd become during this trip." "Suddenly, there was this shot." "I asked you to walk straight forwards, you gently exited the shot." "I was baffled by your disappearance." "I should have known that this was a preminition of what would happen to us." "Of course, I kept filming you." "I filmed you obstinately, day after day." "I don't know how many rolls I used, nor the number of shots of you laughing, smiling, smoking, dreaming were taken." "It scared me sometimes, and I'd turn the camera off quickly and insult myself." "But that didn't last long, and I'd start again, knowing that the necessity to constantly collect images of you, was no game." "It'd become an inexplicable illness, in which joy and desire mixed with other emotions, no doubt more bitter and less clear." "The following images were filmed in the ghetto early, one morning when you slept in." "We'd already walked these streets together." "Both families of your parents had lived around here, neighbours in a poor, noisy building." "You told me they all worked for the same man, a socialist printer." "Fascism brought them unemployment, then they decided to leave for different horizons." "Your grandmothers were childhood friends." "Your father only had sisters." "The kids from both families did paper rounds before going to school." "You told me they often went to the cinema, they only liked westerns and epics." "I remember one of your grandfathers' was called Marco, like me." "On Sundays, he liked to paint watercolours, on the banks of the Tiber." "You see, I haven't forgotten." "I know you often think that he gave you the taste for canvass and paint brushes, even if you never knew him." "Not him, nor your uncles Giuseppe and Carlo, your mother's brothers, who disappeared in the camps along with millions of others." "It's strange to walk these streets without you, thinking of them." "I don't think much of their decor is left, but when your mother was little, maybe she went by the synagogue." "The camera films for a long time, I like the noise it makes." "Without knowing it, maybe it's capturing fragments of their past." "I like to believe that." "Is it ok like that?" "Stay real still." "I'm not moving." "Is it..." "Is it in focus?" " Did you set it right?" " Yes, don't worry." " Don't move!" " I'm not!" " Did you check the light?" "Is it green?" " Yes, it is!" "Stay still." " Look at me." " I am looking at you." "Look at me without moving." " Like that?" " Yes." "More cheerful." "And don't move!" "That's right." "A few days later,we met up in the hills to celebrate New year." "Romano, your cousin, was there with some friends and several family members, that you hadn't seen in ages." "They gave me a warm welcome, and monopolized you." "For me, the atmosphere was strangely stilted, but maybe that was just me." "The majority of the people didn't know each other." "I felt like a stranger." "I kept getting borred:" "I'd have prefered to spend the night alone with you, in our room in Trastevere." "You didn't seem to notice how I felt, or you didn't want to." "In fact, I hardly saw you at all that night, it seemed you were avoiding me." "Romano introduced me to a few people." "I mustn't have been a very good guest." "I automatically recorded all the images of this party." "A really clingy guy never left your side." "He seemed to amuse you." "I would happily have strangled him." "I was jealous, and at the same time, couldn't help filming." "The fear you could exit my life, overwhelmed me." "I followed you around hoping you'd glance at me." "The other guy mustn't have understood my weird behaviour." "The others laughed, drank, sang, kissed and smiled at me behind the camera, but I didn't really see them." "I felt faint." "It was as if the camera was directing the story alone." "I was simply the operator." "I only felt better after the clock chimed midnight, when the music was louder than everything else." "Of course, I didn't sleep." "The day broke, and in the early morning, I found you there." "Everyone had gone." "The sudden wish, slightly crazy albeit, to dance took hold of me." "I put on a record that had been played a lot the night before, and that I'd wanted to dance to with you." "I asked Romano to film us." "You called me an idiot." "Like a fool, I thought our love had found its calm and light here." "But of course, it wasn't that simple." "For you, I don't think things were so clear." "I continued to film you on our walks, and you appreciated less and less this obsession." "Your discomfort appeared like a crack." "That day, we walked around one of the hills near Rome, and, as usual, I filmed shot after shot." "Gently, you asked me to put my camera down." "It was almost a challenge." "But I didn't understand..." "So you became ironic and distant." "Then you turned the tables on me." "Before me, there was nothing but the empty, quiet landscape." "It was both a game and a settling of scores." "I felt helpless." "You left me and headed off on your own." "I wanted those images to be in the film too." "I owed you that." " Hide!" " Be careful!" "There'll be proof!" "Proof of what?" "Didn't you notice the mic on the camera?" "So what?" "A mic records things." " I said, hide." " OK!" "So go hide!" " You have a forfeit!" " Stop it!" "STOP IT!" "STOP IT!" "You're wasting film." "You're wasting film!" "You act now." " I'm no actor!" " You're a good actor." " That's not true." " A really good actor." "Can you pull that long face again?" "Stop, Sandra!" "Look at me!" "OK, that's enough!" "Enough already!" "The return of your favourite actress." "Your favourite actress!" "During those days, I thought more and more about Berlin." "I needed Berlin." "I needed my other memory." "The night, lying next to you in bed, with the noises of Rome through the open window," "I was able to mentally retrace my walks with Wilhelm." "Marlene's melody obsessed me again." "I made secret links between the 2 cities." "Strangely, the shadows of Rome's façades lead me to the colours of Berlin, and the clear obscurity of pre-war." "From time to time, I'm not sure where certain images come from." "Is it Rome?" "Is it Paris?" "Is it Berlin?" "Certain evenings, I couldn't sleep." "I'd find myself awake at 4 am, counting roads instead of sheep." "But it didn't work." "My memory seemed to be a daydream." "Twice during our trip to Rome, I sent postcards to Wilhelm." "I knew it was less to send him news than to write simply "Berlin" under a monument of Rome." "Towards the end, when you started to distance yourself, these thoughts of Berlin became more frequent." "I didn't look for explanations." "I simply became impatient to go back there." "Some guy once wrote that all we can do on earth is search till the end for a city, a childhood." "I'm not sure what he really meant, but I think these words suit me," "me and Berlin." "To my love for you and for this city." "Are you OK?" "I've had enough of this nightmare." "I've got enough!" "What did you say?" "Nothing." "Don't you want to repeat what you said?" "No." "Too bad for you." "Ok." "That's too bad for me." "Too bad for you!" "Can I film you?" "I don't know." "Later, if you like." "Too bad for you!" " Sandra." " What?" "Turn out that light!" " No." " Turn it out!" " Sandra..." " Stop it!" "Stop." "Sandra you're beautiful I want to see you." "Stop that right now!" "Stop!" "Let's finish the film." "No." "Stop now!" "Stop this minute." "Stop this minute." "Stop it!" " Sandra." " Yes." "I don't want to stop." "You're pushing me." "You're ruining my shot?" "Ok, enough." "That's enough!" "Stop!" "Verano cemetery." "We looked for the Jewish graves." "We got a bit lost, then we saw names, all the names on the gravestones." "We imagined silhouettes, stories and lives." "It was kind of the prolongation of my walk in the ghettos." "One of those memorable places, where we begin to understand what roots are, and realize we don't want to lose them." "You came with me that time, you were somewhat moved, secretive, hoping, like me, it'd be a nice day." "We met no one." "We walked side by side." "I didn't film you." "Several times, your hand reached for mine." "Twenty times, you smiled at me, without saying anything." "That day marked the six month anniversary of our encounter at the Saint Sulpice square." "I think you thought about it too." "You thought of it as being pleasant, without, for once, even for a second, letting your doubts set in." "We hardly spoke." "It was easy to be together but remain silent." "Cemeteries provide that chance, sometimes." "Today, on screen, I've got the feeling of this sensation, just as strongly." "I felt like I was crossing the garden of Eden, that I was in Paradise." "I knew we were at the right place, at the right time." "There was nothing to fear." "Maybe that was the day, we should have left Rome to return to Paris." "Maybe we should have cut short the trip, or gotten off half way," "You or I ." "But we didn't know and things turned out otherwise." "This is why you're not here tonight, and why I'm talking to you alone over mute images," "without even being sure you're hearing me." "It's late, I've drunk too much coffee." "My throat's sore and my eyes are tired because it's the hour for vivid images of Ostia and I don't want them to come." "I don't want to see them." "So I won't show them to you." "Maybe it's better that way." "That morning, you wanted to take the train to the seaside." "Do you remember?" "They were our last days in Rome, the end of the journey." "And as it's neared, you've grown more distant." "I know and feel it, because of your lack of gestures and the emptiness in your voice." "From the beginning, my incessant glance, bothered you." "Now, it tires you and almost scares you." "You say something's come undone and you don't know anymore." "You want to leave and be alone." "That's how it is." "You walk along the beach." "You come straight towards me." "In the distance, a radio plays the sweet melody of a summer hit from the past or the future." "Your words come out wrong." "We ate seafood in an empty restaurant and drank a bottle of wine on the hillside." "Outside, you say nothing." "Your eyes speaks more of your doubts, regrets, the reasons for our break-up." "There are no words for that." "I film as usual." "The beach is empty." "On the return train, we'd split up." "You headed straight for the flat." "I wandered the streets most of the night." "It rained." "There was a storm, but the dark sky was now serene again." "Rome still had its decorations up." "I amused myself by playing with the lights, but my heart wasn't in it." "As I walked, I remembered a reflection in a window that you showed me one day, all smiles." "It read "amor"" "which is "Roma" backwards." "I may have burst out laughing." "In the morning, I decided to go back to Paris earlier." "You agreed with me." "That's how we left one another." "I went back to Paris the next day." "You stayed in Rome a few days more." "Then you came back too." "We didn't say anything definite, but we never saw each other again." "I don't know what you do, what you paint, how you sleep." "I don't like some things anymore, like my bed being unmade." "For a long time, I didn't want to think about all that." "And then, slowly, I took out all these images of you." "From Berlin and Rome." "Amongst them," "I found this one I'd almost forgotten." "It ressembles the one the day we met, but they're not exactly the same." "It was a day when we amused ourselves reconstructing everything:" "Sandra on her bench, and Mark behind the camera." "The Saint Sulpice square basking in summer light." "She's immersed in her book." "She doesn't see him coming, but he moves towards her with a very long travelling shot" "and their story begins." "For Martine, Philippe and Valerio." "Translation:" "Nicola Haughton"