The film centers on a literary critic who pursues the elusive author behind a blockbuster novel, Last Hours of a Love Story. Daphné Despero, a young publisher, discovers the manuscript in a Brittany library for rejected books and sets out to uncover the mysterious writer behind the work. What she uncovers challenges the obvious story: she learns from Madeleine Pick and Joséphine Pick that Henri Pick is a recently deceased owner of a former pizza shop, and not the celebrated author many assumed him to be. The revelation shifts the investigation from a single name to a web of people connected to the book’s publication and to the very library of rejected books that framed the mystery.
A popular television-show literary critic, Jean Michel Rouche, finds it hard to accept that a simple pizza-maker from Brittany could have composed a literary masterpiece. He decides to take on the role of a detective, driven by skepticism and a desire to protect the truth surrounding the novel’s authorship. With the cooperation of [Joséphine Pick], he digs into the book’s origins, tracing the tangled stories of various individuals tied to the manuscript, the publication process, and the hidden motives that concealed identities and connections to the novel’s content. The search reveals how ambition, pride, and secrecy can blur the lines between author and origin, pulling a diverse cast of characters into a shared mystery.
As the inquiry deepens, Rouche considers a lead from an earlier work by a young author that was to be reviewed on his show. Fred Koskas, Daphné’s partner, was involved in that prior narrative, and Rouche grows convinced that Fred himself might be the author behind Last Hours of a Love Story, a realization that reshapes the stakes and solidifies the detective’s resolve to uncover the truth. The pursuit becomes as much about the motives that drive people to hide their contributions as it is about the manuscript itself, painting a broader portrait of how literary fame can hinge on undisclosed credits and hidden histories.
In the end, the film closes with a reflective moment between [Joséphine Pick] and Rouche as they contemplate another author whose mystery echoes the same pattern, suggesting that the enigma at the heart of Last Hours of a Love Story may be part of a larger, enduring puzzle about authorship, identity, and the stories we choose to tell.
