THE SECRETIVE WOMAN

Shoals of fish… and the crackle of a radio hook-up. A blinding light slowly gets bigger. Antoine Béraud, thirty, stripped to the waist, pilots an experimental submarine. He enters a decompression tank, huddled up, motionless, out of reach. A modern adventurer, a conqueror, sure of himself and his life. A man comes to press a telex messages against the window of his tank. Hélène, his wife of the last six years, has had an accident at home in Paris. A cop, full of tact, who has come to pick up the autopsy report, concludes that it was suicide. She jumped from a bridge into the Seine after taking a massive dose of barbiturates. Case closed. Hélène's death makes Antoine reconsider his adventurous lifestyle and what he sees as his responsibility in her death. You can have an "unusual" job and still live an ordinary life. Hélène? A presence two months a year; a ring on her finger; a shared apartment and the idea of a calm, consenting woman who never caused any "trouble". Secretive? Probably, yes. He rejects the idea of suicide and sets off to look for clues and reasons. He slowly discovers Hélène's secrets; a dual, triple or multiple life. A quest for the absolute, the search for lost childhood and a family, a taste for risk and gambling. Helped by Marie, a young photographer from the press agency where his wife worked, Antoine finds Franchin, an old painter with morbid tastes who had made Hélène his only model. Antoine finds a man in his apartment, Zacharias Pasdeloup, an overgrown teenager, a collector of stamps and also a messenger in a business bank. This man's frantic behaviour makes him realize that Hélène had kept a precious computer code on her. The search for this code leads him to Camille Allighéri, a young and seductive financial adviser and Hélène's accomplice in a bank swindle. There's Marc too, Camille's brother, a virtuoso pianist, a gambler and a decadent cynic who laundered money in sordid gambling deals. Hélène divided up her life. They all talk about her but their versions contradict each other. Antoine is distraught, his self-esteem in shreds. His investigation brings him up against impressions and people who are unknown to him. Little by little, he takes over this world for himself. He makes Hélène's story his own. When Camille is in danger, he takes her side and joins in the game, continuing the two women's project. The reasons for the suicide diminish in importance. There is no executioner; no victim. Hélène, a fragile young woman, gave into the pressure of Franchin, Marc, Pasdeloup and Camille's problems and broke down when she lost the house at the edge of the sea, the magical scene of a recovered childhood. Antoine changes. This initiatory journey forces him to deal with the world and his inability to live "in society". Will he find his salvation with Camille? A psychological thriller for a man who thought he lived free, far from others and who learns to fight in a harsh and insidious world. This terrifying quest will help him grow… through his love for a woman… a secretive woman.