A Romantic Comedy based on the drama of the Spanish Republican exile.
Growing up in a community of Spanish Republican emigrants, Hilaire is part of the generation of young people in the working-class neighbourhoods of Narbonne in the 1960s. He experienced the Narbonne childhood despised by French, Algerians, Portuguese, Italians and gypsies, who would shout “Spanish piece of shit” at him.
Sixty years after leaving, Hilaire returns to his hometown to discover the modern-day Spain of Catalan political prisoners and exiles, an inner journey back to the Ebro Delta, to the repressive legacy of the postwar period, but also to his first childhood love.
Hilaire Arasa is one of the teenage protagonists of Jean Eustache’s film Mes petites amoureuses (1974). Henry François Imbert reviews the work done by Eustache with a second film Le temps des amorouses (2009) in which Hilaire is the central character. In the hands of two great unclassifiable filmmakers, Mario Pons’ The Mirror portrays Hilaire’s life.
A loving look at the perverse submission of hatred.