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 Yoshino Kimura practicing © 2006 Cobos Films BV
The first conversation is with a young Japanese musician, standing in front of Chopin's grave, praying. Her face is tender and passionate as she explains that Chopin is the "soul" who inspires her music: the reason she came to Paris to study piano . Her dead father liked Chopin, and she imagines he listens to her as she plays.
 Heddy Honigmann, director 2006 Cobos Films BV
Why merci?
An Iranian opens his heart to the documentary filmmaker. He stands before the writer Hedayat's grave, hidden in tree branches. He comes to visit the grave, he explains, because the writer was someone "exceptionelle." He dared say what others could not. He wrote a story about an abandoned dog: clearly a metaphor, the Iranian explains, for the human condition. He wrote the phrase: "Moi je suis fatigue des gens autour de moi." The Iranian was also tired of the people around him in Iran : it is why he is now in Paris driving a taxi.
 Does he do anything else besides drive a taxi, the off-voice asks. "Yes," says the taxi driver, humbly. "I sing. I always carry a book of poetry and music in my cab. I sing to keep the culture of Iran ."
"Will you sing for me?" The Iranian shrugs in embarrassment: no.
A moment later, he sings to the camera.
The music carries to the next scene: the daughter of an artisan is at her father's grave, explaining that she is telling l her dead father about all the art exhibits she has seen that week. "My father loved art," she explains.
We scoot out the cemetery into the Louvre. A woman Valerie is before a painting by Ingres. "I come here," she explains. "Because here I have the impression to be with a great family. Here, I have a concentration I normally do not have, something that takes me far. As a girl, I thought these people in the gallery all existed."
The woman gazes with ecstacy at Ingres's lounging forms.
We return to the cemetery, this time at the grave of Yves Montand and Simone Signoret. We flash to three blind people on a couch watching the film "Les Diaboliques." They are enraptured by the film, guessing what is happening. "I suppose Simone just slapped the man," says one woman. "Yes," her blind partner to the right claps his hands. "Ah! She is extraordinary, Simone Signoret. Such an actress. So authentique. She plays so well here!"
The three blind spectators lean forward, not wanting to miss a scene.
Blindness leads back to Proust. "Proust is a blind painter," a visitor explains. "He writes what he cannot draw." He arranges a flower in a vase.
It is a gesture repeated often in this film's homage to art: hands cleaning gravestones, wiping the name clean of moss. The respect for the realm of the spirit, of art, of a permanence beyond the circumstantial is the key to this film---and the Dutch filmmaker's trademark. Raised in French schools in Lima, daughter of Holocaust survivors, Honigmann's acclaimed documentaries---made in Israel , Europe and South America -all explore the need for the poetic. Her range includes films about immigrant musicians in the Paris metro, widows from Bosnia clutching mementos of their husbands, and cabdrivers in Lima speaking about dreams.
Honigmann herself followed her dream: as a young girl, she went to Rome to study film, before launching her career in Holland. In between was a wonderful year in Paris. The Pere Lachaise film is, in a sense, her own "merci."
And who would the director like to visit? Felix Nadar, a French photographer who took aerial photos and photographed all the celebrities of his time. He had an extremely dedicated and inventive life, faithful to his art and faithful to his wife.
It is a dedication the director shares as well: " Art is my lover when I am not with my real lover," she says. "Art caresses me, consoles me, inspires me."
The film ends with the resounding music of Chopin: the Japanese girl's concert to her father. It is clear what Honigmann means by "forever."
Award-winning "Forever" first screened at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. Forever will be screened in Paris as part of the "Cinema au féminin" festival which takes place at the end of September at the Cinema Publicis located on the Champs Elysees.
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