In Paris, many years ago, a seemingly ordinary man had been for a long time a regular visitor to a strange place, a kind of secret club where he was allowed to watch people – ordinary people, like him – going about their everyday, routine driven, uninteresting lives. A film producer, realizing that that man’s experience could be turned into a project, approaches him. The film is dominated by what arises from the ensuing conversation between the two. A dialogue filmed in shot and reverse shot where the theme up for discussion is a hypothetical place and experience. The film, admittedly conventional, contradicts convention in a refreshing way: with its elegance, the quality of the script, with the way it is filmed. The viewer is summoned to imagine the experience, hanging from every line in the dialogue. The success of the film is largely due to two actors: Jacques Nolot and Sharif Andoura, perfectly tuned at every revelation, hesitation, silence and complicit smiles – both faultless as if they were inhabited by the words. The fact that filming a textual script these days can be risky adds all the more value to Cédric Venail’s work. In "À Discrétion" we hardly notice the time going by. (TL)