Chapters (21)
| CÉLESTE | Janet McTeer | ||
| PROUST | Alan Bates | ||
| ODILON | Jonathan Coy | ||
| CONCIERGE | Gillian Martell | ||
| AMABLE MASSIS | Paul Rhys | ||
| DR BIZE | Philip McGough | ||
| GASTON POULET | Philip Rham | ||
| LOUIS RUYSSEN | Peter Geeves | ||
| VICTOR GENTIL | Michael Wilcox | ||
| MME MASSIS | Celia Imrie | ||
| PRINCESS SOUTZO | Lesley Nightingale | ||
| PAUL MORAND | Michael Grandage | ||
| HEAD WAITER | Richard Syms | ||
| PETAIN | Benjamin Buckton | ||
| Producer | Innes Lloyd | ||
| Directed by | Udayan Prasad | ||
| Music adapted and directed by | George Fenton | ||
| Music performed by | The Delme String Quartet |
INT. PROUST’S APARTMENT. KITCHEN. DAY.
Céleste Albaret, a tall young woman of twenty-five, handsome rather than pretty, sits at the kitchen table.
She is dressed in maid’s uniform.
Sunshine floods in through the window.
Superimpose opening captions.
INT. PROUST’S BEDROOM. DAY.
Proust is sitting propped up in bed, wearing a cardigan round his shoulders.
He is writing in one of his notebooks.
PROUST (voice-over) People think of a novel as a sort of cube, one side of which has been removed, so that the author can put in the people he meets. But it’s more like a huge cemetery in which on the majority of tombs the names are effaced and can no longer be read, even by the author.
INT. PROUST’S APARTMENT. KITCHEN. DAY.
The bell board.
The buzzer in Proust’s bedroom has rung.
INT. PROUST’S APARTMENT. KITCHEN/KITCHEN CORRIDOR. DAY.
The kitchen and Céleste’s bedroom are the only rooms that have natural light. Since the shutters are kept closed and the curtains drawn in the apartment it seems always night.
Céleste manoeuvres a silver tray through the kitchen door and walks down the kitchen corridor.
PROUST (voice-over) Céleste has many virtues and one of them is that in the two years she has been with me she has never asked if she has been put in the book.
INT. PROUST’S APARTMENT. SALON. DAY.
Céleste opens a door into the main salon.
She switches on the light and we see a room crowded with heavy furniture.
A pair of double doors are on the wall facing Céleste as she crosses the room.
She makes for the right-hand set of doors and opens the right-hand panel of the double door.
She goes in, closing the door behind her.
INT. PROUST’S BEDROOM. DAY.
The room is lit only by the bedside lamp. The light is sufficient, though, to take in the geography of the room.
To the right of Céleste, as she stands with the tray at the door, are two long windows, shutters closed, full-length blue curtains drawn.
This room too is crowded with furniture, including a grand piano that is crammed against the wardrobe that stands between the two windows.
On the wall facing Céleste is a fireplace, and to the left of the fireplace, the focal point of the room, a simple brass bedstead with behind it a Chinese lacquer screen.
Proust is sitting propped up in bed.