At the peak of his acting career, Serge Tanneur turned his back on the world of show business for good. It was all too much grief – he was worn down by a profession in which everyone betrays everyone else. Serge withdrew to live like a hermit in a run-down house on the Île de Ré off France’s Atlantic coast.Three years later, Gauthier Valence, a well-loved TV actor whose specialty is the big-hearted hero, shows up on the island. He’s come to find Serge to offer him a role in Molière’s classic, “The Misanthrope”. After all, hasn’t Serge become the perfect embodiment of the play’s main character, Alceste?Serge refuses point blank and swears he’ll never go back on stage. And yet, something inside him wants to be convinced. He suggests to Gauthier that they rehearse the first scene of the play, a dialog between Philinte and Alceste. After five days of rehearsal, he’ll know if he wants to do the play or not.Rehearsals begin. The two actors size each other up and challenge one another’s approach, torn between the pleasure of acting together and the brutal urge to lay into each other. Gauthier’s good nature is often times pushed to the limit by Serge’s resentment.All this is played out in the microcosm of the Île de Ré, slumbering in the low season, and alongside the pair’s encounters with a young hotel maid whose ambition is to be a porn actress and an Italian divorcée who’s selling her house.One might even start to believe that Serge will really tread the boards again...
