A View of Love 2010

In the sun-drenched south of France, Marc Palestro is a partner in his father-in-law’s real estate agency, quietly steering a family business that has long defined him. A new client arrives—Mrs Maldonato—who wants a grand old house, and Marc senses a spark of recognition, wondering if she might be Cathy, Solène Forveille, his childhood sweetheart from before his family fled Algeria in 1962. Memories of that time—both the horrors of civil war and the joys of adolescent love—grip him.

When he offers her a lift, she takes a dip in the sea in her underwear and then goes to a hotel room where they make love. She reappears later to sign the preliminary contract to purchase the property. Obsessed with his first love, even though his mother tells him Cathy was killed in a bombing, Marc Palestro leaves his wife and daughter to try and find her once more.

However, she is the elusive frontwoman for a crime syndicate and is in fact an aspiring actress who is being coached in this role by Toni Servillo (Sergio Bartoli), another partner in the agency and her lover. Though she had let Marc think she was the dead Cathy, in reality she was a close friend of the pair called Marie-Jeanne Marie-Josée Croze and had always adored Marc.

Marc discovers enough to expose Sergio’s plot and then, in pouring rain, is reunited with Marie-Jeanne outside a theatre where she has secured a part.