http://youtu.be/5ZaJ5oHADIY
Another autobiographical French film, with well-done English subtitles, that moved me enormously,
A lower middle class Armenian family works hard at making clothes in Marseilles to bring up their son Azad Zakar. He grows up and turns out to be a successful playwright and gets hooked by a Parisian socialite who decides to develop him as a celebrity. Over the next fifteen years, he loses his touch with his poor and ageing parents and hardly gets to see them. Of course he still has lots of childhood memories and feelings...He sends his parents money regularly, and instead of spending it on their needs, they secretly keep all that money in a box in their small apartment on the mantlepiece, like they always used to do with their little money when he grew up.
His father comes to visit him in Paris, and sees his new play. It's a great success, and its story revolves around Azad's childhood. After the premiere the old man sits alone in the theatre for Azad, whose celebrity name is Pierre, to come and fetch him as he had promised. Azad almost forgets his father in the hullabaloo after the play but remembers just when getting into his expensive limousine with his wife Carole. He goes back to his father, and apologizes. In that silent moment inside the empty theatre, he presents his father an antique flute, and they bond like in old times when the father used to play a refrain, to put a young Azad to sleep every night. Far into the night the parents themselves would continue to work at the embroidery and making clothes, to earn a bit more to get over their difficulties.
The entire move is here for you to see. it is so touching.
Finally Azad finds his Armenian roots and acknowledges the love and care of his noble parents, but by then his father is no more. However Azad is happy that he makes his mother Mayrig feel like a queen in the mansion with the rose garden down their old street, at 558 Rue Paradis, that he has bought and outfitted for her to live in comfort with servants. He promises to surprise her with visits accompanied by his two lovely children, not Carole who is now separated, but their young and delightful Armenian lady tutor.
