Plaisir en France

Bitter irony of language… Les Petits Prés (small meadows) in Plaisir (pleasure) in the Yvelines department, is the name of a long-term stay institution for people of twenty, forty or sixty with no place to go – former inmates of childrens’homes, people suffering from mental or social handicaps. For the majority, entering the hospital means a life sentence. There’s no escape once you are in. Christian Laurent, brought here by his mother at the age of seventeen, describes the emptiness and despair in a place where he only awaits death. Only three couples formerly in the institution, manage to encounter the world outside : Jean-Claude, Marie-Louise and the others learn to take their lives in charge : tenderness and love gave them back a taste for life. But they have not forgotten the terrible years spent in the Petits Prés.