Contre l'Oubli (Against Oblivion) is a compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.
This slice-of-life drama about an elderly couple and their estranged son covers twenty-four fateful hours that begin with the usual daily routine for the retired pair of former teachers (Micheline Presle and Claude Pieplu). Then their son telephones to say he will be coming over with his girlfriend and the normal pattern is changed, as he visits them rarely. While the mother is obsequious to her son when he arrives, past hurts and resentments bubble up during lunch, making it difficult for the son to tell them he is getting married. This is news enough, but the effect that announcement has on the son and his fiancée is unexpected and events later on in the day take a turn for the worse.
Camille, a young, provincial, proletarian man works for Hélène Courtray, who is still beautiful and seductive. She's a sophisticated, cultivated and well-to-do woman who has engaged him to care for her reclusive son who has spent the past few years voluntarily locked up in his room. An encounter between two persons and two worlds where the relationship of the young man to this closed, strange and unknown universe rapidly turns tragedy.
