- When a man attempts to reply to a break-up letter from his sweetheart he finds that his stationery is against him.
- When picking up his mail, a man is excited to see a letter from his sweetheart. His excitement turns to sorrow when he gets home to his flat and sees that it is a Dear John letter. But that sorrow turns to anger as he figures that he will send her a Dear Jane letter in return. However, writing that letter isn't as easy as he hopes as he encounters one problem after another, from a broken fountain pen, to a temperamental ink well, to stuck stamps, to a broken desk.—Huggo
- (*Spoilers*)
A young man (played by Pierre Étaix) hurries home at the end of the working day, braving the heavy traffic of the city, at a considerable risk to his wellfare at times. He is enraptured with his own thoughts, and oblivious of the noise and movements around him. Finally he arrives home, stops briefly at the concierge's door, who handles him a pack of letters and stays spying on him from behind the windows. The man searches briefly through the pack, and singles out one letter that he sniffs with evident pleasure.
He is so enfatuated with the letter that he practically bumps onto a beautiful girl (played by Anne-Marie Royer) coming down the stairs - a neighbour who, by her face which changes abruptly from happiness to sadness, is more than a bit fond of him.
The man goes up the stairs very quickly, and once inside his apartment, he drops the letters onto a writing desk fit with a heavy glass ink-pot. He wants to hang his overcoat on a peg, but the peg breaks and the heavy overcoat falls on the floor. He jets aside the broken peg, or rather it escapes hios hands, he kicks the overcoat that a minute ago seemed so important to him, and closes the wardrobe door. Kneeling by the wastepaper baskett, the man reads quickly the senders names, and one by one as in a modern production line, automatically drops each one in the baskett - safe one. He sits up, breaths deeply, and prepares for the great moment - opening the letter - but not before he gets a good look at the girl of his affection, that seems to be smiling at him from a picture-frame standing on a table against the wall. He breaths out in the direction of the picture, and the frame falls flat on the picture side.
He lifts the frame, and sets it on the horizontal, face up, on a large book that leaves on the corner of the writing desk. Looking alternately to the girl's picture and to the letter, he manages to open the letter, and starts reading. It's his turn now to change his facial expression from radious light to deep shadows. He further inspects the envelope, and extracts from it two more pieces of hard paper - two halves of his smiling photo, teared apart. He lifts the central pane of the desk - hiding his face from the world. No! He sets it down, extracting from it a pad of luxury paper, a pen and a box of pen-points, and prepares to write a letter to his former girlfriend, with hilarious consequences. The rupture of love affair seems to have broken his functional links with each and everyone object in the room: no pen point will stay fix, the fountain-pen brokes, the large spot of ink only affects the top page, but the man botches all of them one by one, until the last one goes. Each gag is reinforced by enhanced sound effects.
The young man's face seems to have given up all hope of writing - or living. He opens a drawer of the desk, and takes the small pistol that lies there - then quickly, he also takes a cigarette and presses the trigger of the pistol-like lighter. No! He is not that desperate. But then he will try to send a letter out with just the girl's photo, also teared in little bits. And his fight with the objects escalates, against the sliding objects on the desk top, the picture frame, the pair of scissors, the postal stamps, and the envelope itself. He can't cope with all this, and he looks tired from these lost battles.
He stands up, and throws himself heavily onto his rocking chair - to relax at last!
The camera follows - a bit late - the arc described by the rocking chair to the back, and the return to it's upward position, empty. Behind the rocking chair is the bay window, open five storeys up over the French courtyard, where some people are looking in silence and awe in the direction of this building...
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