Derniers remords avant l'oubli

Jean-Luc Lagarce's characters like to go back, retrace their steps, look back on their past. And the premature death of the writer, actor, director and publisher (1957-1995) only further encourages us to read his plays as retrospectives, as exercises in the mourning of memories. Derniers remords avant l'oubli is the evocation of a youthful love that united a woman and two men in a mansion filled with the scents of summer. Now, the time of inventory has succeeded that of invention; Pierre lives alone in the house that his friends, accompanied by their spouses, have come to convince him to sell.
It's a question of "money, therefore passion(s), therefore utopia(s), therefore love(s)", stresses young director Rodolphe Dana, whose third staging, after a Oncle Vania remarked and, last year, a touching Pays lointain by the same Jean-Luc Lagarce.
As is often the case with Lagarce's work, it's also about washed-up loves and memories, family histories, settling of scores; haunted, incommunicable feelings.
All this is conveyed in the language, the famous and singular language of Jean-Luc Lagarce. These repeated phrases that are never ratiocinations, simply desires to track feelings as closely, as accurately - rather to remain silent than betray oneself.