A sax player who can't read music—or anything—finds love in the Paris metro.
Charly, a young man in his thirties, is illiterate. He hides this handicap by combining humor and a sense of trickery. Charly found his mode of expression: music, for which and by which he lives while searching in the metro with his friends. It is there that he will meet Marie, seduced by this marginal sax player. Marie, despite the tricks deployed by Charly, will quickly realize that he is illiterate. But love has already given Charly the desire to learn to read...
Acting
Kristin Scott Thomas before stardom—magnetic, restrained, real.
Score
Live saxophone as emotional language, wordless and raw.
Director
Florence Strauss
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Kristin Scott Thomas made this during her early French cinema period before The English Patient made her international.
1980s French short films often used the metro as metaphor for social invisibility—Charly inverts this, making underground space his stage.
FR
