Rendez-vous

Like other youngsters of their age, they arranged to meet in a café, for a cake and fruit juice. Off frame, a pianist is stringing out a standard piece conducive to romance. The boy is clumsy, emotional-and so enthralled by the cake sitting in splendour on his plate that he tucks into it right away. The young lady decides to remind him of his manners: one doesn’t go to a restaurant to eat “like at home” but to talk. “About what?”, he exclaims. The first romantic date, a lover’s first tiff, the first baring of souls, the first disappointment. The same old tune, one might think, except that the young girl has Down’s syndrome and the boy is also handicapped. (Yann Lardeau)