Stillborn but intriguing Francois Truffaut film (1978), assembled from two short stories by Henry James. The filmmaker himself stars as a journalist whose life is centered on the memory of his dead wife; he meets a young woman (Nathalie Baye) with a similar obsession, and together they construct an altar to all their dead–family, friends, heroes–in an abandoned chapel. Truffaut is attempting a philosophical disquisition on the presence of the lost, the ways in which the dead remain a part of our lives, but his theme can’t escape the morbid eccentricity of his characters; the film dead-ends in sheer neurosis. Photographed, in fecund greens and withering yellows, by Nestor Almendros. In French with subtitles.