Vingt mille lieux sous la mère

Directed by François Zabaleta

It's not a story. Nothing happens. Literally, there are no characters. It's the story of an absence of story. The non-story of a mother and son, a non-mother and non-son, who never meet. They know each other. They socialize. But they don't meet. It's the story of a meeting that doesn't happen. A non-meeting that lasts a lifetime. There's the mother and the son. Two people who sometimes cross paths. When they are in each other's presence, they are not together. They don't know how to be together. They haven't learned to be. When they are in each other's presence, they wait for it to pass. It's not a mother and son. It's a man and a woman who find time long. They're here because it's supposed to be a mother's job to spend time with her son. It's a man and a woman waiting on a station platform for a train that's never coming.