Thick Skinned

This brooding, enigmatic story won the 1989 Prix George Sadoul at the Cannes Film Festival, in the category "Un Certain Regard," which focuses on "smaller" films. In the story, Gerard and his wife Annie have made a nice life for themselves on their farm. That life is disturbed by the arrival of Gerard's older brother Roland - a brother Annie never knew existed. It gradually becomes clear that both brothers had once negligently set fire to a barn while drunk, inadvertently causing the death of a sleeping wanderer. Roland took all the blame for causing the death, and spent ten years in prison for it. Now he wants Gerard to make those years up to him. Gerard, who up until then had succeeded in putting the incident out of his mind, is now consumed by guilt, and, since he loves both his brother and his wife, doesn't know what to do about those demands. Not only that, but he is a little bit afraid of Roland.