The Long Absence
Une aussi longue absence
1961
Palme d'Or — 14th Cannes Film Festival
- Director:
- Henri Colpi
- Starring:
- Alida Valli, Georges Wilson, Charles Blavette
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Sixteen years after her husband Albert vanished during World War II, café owner Thérèse becomes convinced that an amnesiac tramp who wanders past her Puteaux pub every day is actually him, recognizing his face and mannerisms despite his claim to a different name. She enlists Albert's family to jog his memory with stories of his wartime arrest and deportation, desperate to restore the man she lost, even as doubt over his true identity lingers. Henri Colpi's drama follows Thérèse's fragile hope colliding with the impossibility of truly recovering a past that the war erased.