During their final walk along the Loire River, the filmmaker’s father tells his son about the books he read in his youth. His favorite hero was Gilgamesh, a tyrant whose rival Enkidu becomes his best friend—but Gilgamesh is unable to save him from a violent end.
After his father’s death, his son discovers that he had left out a crucial element of the story: the inconsolable Gilgamesh set out in search of a remedy for death. The filmmaker connects this detail to the discovery of dozens of text documents on his father's computer—he was a mathematician who for years had meticulously recorded how he spent his time and everything he bought. It was as if he were searching for a formula, or a remedy for something.
The filmmaker uses reenacted scenes to reconstruct his father’s activities during the final years of his life, in and around the family home. The notes form the spoken text, and gradually details of his father’s personality emerge. So too does a portrait of the time: with younger generations having moved to the city, most of the houses in the neighborhood now stand empty. The Loire flows past, just as everyone’s life slips away.
Stills
