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Gilbert Valence is a an old and respected theater actor, and his talent and his career have given him the most important roles an actor could wish for. One night, at the end of a performance of Eugène Ionesco's Exit the King (Le Roi se meurt, 1962), tragedy bursts into his life; his agent and old friend, Georges, tells him that his wife, daughter and son-in-law have just died in a car accident. The tragedy affects him in subtle ways, forcing him to confront his own mortality.
As time passes, Gilbert Valence busies himself with his daily life in Paris, looking after his 9-year-old grandson. Time passes, life returns to normal. Gilbert Valence now shares his time between his grandson, whom he adores, and the theater. Back in the theater, he is given a new role, playing Prospero, the Shakespearean hero of The Tempest.
Some time later, his agent offers him a starring role in a TV movie with the most fashionable ingredients: drugs, sex and violence. And he is angry: he has not had the career he has had to now agree to commit himself to a job that is totally repugnant to him, under the pretext that he will earn a lot of money. But the day an American director proposes to him to make Ulysses, an adaptation of Joyce, he accepts with enthusiasm.
In the studio, with the lighting and décor set up, the director suggests a rehearsal: Gilbert Valence has some hesitations, some memory lapses, but this is not too serious: they will resume the next day. But the next day, in the middle of the shoot, the old actor feels the world slipping away from him, and he can't face reality. The text escapes him. He feels unable to memorize his lines of the script, he stops and says very calmly: I'm going home... He leaves the studio and goes home.
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I'm Going Home
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LOHENGRIN - Prélude (Vorspiel 1 Aufzug)
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Valse opus 69, No 1 en La bémol Majeur (L'adieu)
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Le Pont Mirabeau
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Sous le Ciel de Paris
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Old Comrades
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