The Green Room

Set in the late 1920s, roughly ten years after the war, the period reflects a country in recovery with lingering memories of loss. The era’s social fabric provides a backdrop for personal grief, memorial rituals, and evolving relationships. The mood combines post-war melancholy with a quiet, meticulous pace that underlines the protagonist's fixation on remembrance.

The action unfolds in a small town in France, a decade after World War I. The cemetery and an abandoned chapel become central locales where memory and ritual converge. Everyday life—work at The Globe and the home routines with the housekeeper—frames a quiet, haunted atmosphere shaped by the living and the dead.

🕯️ Death and Memory

Julien Davenne’s life centers on honoring the dead through ritual and portrait. The conversion of the chapel into a candlelit shrine makes memory tangible, turning affection for the departed into a public display. The film explores how memory can sustain a person while also isolating them from the living.

💔 Grief and Obsession

Grief drives Julien to extreme devotion, blurring the lines between reverence and fixation. His relationship with Cecilia tests the balance between living love and insistent memory. The unresolved past, including Massigny’s betrayal, intensifies his emotional fragility and eventual tragedy.

⛪ Ritual and Faith

The chapel rituals function as a spiritual refuge and a test of belief in the face of pain. The film probes whether ritual can heal or merely encode grief, showing how the living attempt to share memory without letting it completely consume them. Cecilia’s final acts gesture toward reconciliation between memory and life.