Le huitième jour
Creators: name: Van Dormael, Jaco
Publisher: name: DARIAH-DE
Year: 2023
Subjects: Family
Work
Grief
Friendship
Love

description: Abstract: 
This film tells the story of George, a man with Down Syndrome living in a specialised residence centre, and Harry, a businessman who teaches about the ideal attitudes to face business work. Both men meet on the road by chance and start a journey together that helps each other deal with their personal conflicts regarding their family situation and the grieving processes linked to it.

Details:
The film's beginning presents George with sequences that refer to his imagination. He recreates his birth and his existence using a reference to the biblical creation passage, which he fills with real and fictional self-information. George lives in a specialized centre for people with cognitive disabilities, and he misses his mother, who sometimes appears in his fantasies. He also is in love with one of his female colleagues. After the dreamy introduction of George, the film presents the second protagonist: the business coach, Harry. Unlike George, Harry is characterised in an objective way. His life is determined by a repetitive and tedious work routine that never ends. He and his wife are separated and live in different cities. Harry seems to have lost control of his personal life due to his laboral occupancy. He even forgets the arrival of his little daughters, who wait for hours for their father in the train station and end up deciding to return alone on another train. 
The holidays start in George’s residence, and he sees how, unlike him, his mates are going with their families. He is left alone, and nobody comes for him, but instead of staying there, he decides to start walking and leave the institution with the company of a dog from the centre. To compensate for the bad situation with his family, Harry decides to buy some toys for his daughters and drive to his wife’s house in order to deliver the presents, even though his wife had told him not to go. When Harry arrives at the house, he stays inside the car and looks at her two daughters, who are outside playing. He feels incapable of approaching them and sorrowfully drives back home. On the road, he starts speeding up and thinks about committing suicide. Suddenly, he hits something with his vehicle, and he stops. After going outside from his car, Harry sees George and understands that he has run over the dog that was accompanying him. Harry offers to drive George home but refuses to tell him the truth and says the direction of his family house. As Harry does not know where it is, he decides to take George to his home in the city. When they arrive at Harry’s house, they bury the dog in his garden. After that, George goes to the house's swimming pool and starts walking over it. Harry can not believe his eyes. 
Harry and Georges start living together, and George joins Harry's daily life. Their coexistence makes Harry more relaxed and funny in his way of dealing with his day by day. Nevertheless, George causes confusion in the people surrounding Harry's routine in the city. After one incident in a shoe store where George disturbs one shop assistant, Harry decides to take George back home and look for the direction he told him the first day they met: “Cherry Street.” When they arrive, George is happy because of the idea of reuniting with his mother. Nevertheless, there is a new owner of the house who tells them that George’s mother died four years ago. After that, the two friends go to the home of Fabienne, George’s sister. When she sees them, she tells George that she was alerted by his residence due to his getaway. George asks her to stay in her house under her care, but the sisters refuse. She tells him that she had to be responsible for her own care as a child since most of her mother's attention was devoted to George and that she is not willing to sacrifice her life for him now. Afterwards, they are back on the road with the intention of seeing the sea. They finally arrive at a beach near the house of Harry’s wife. It is very foggy, and George starts walking and loses himself. After a while, he returns with Harry, and both hug. 
Harry goes to his wife’s house the following day and demands to see his daughters. She denies him the possibility of doing so, and they start to struggle. Suddenly, Georges enters and separates Harry from his wife, and they both go outside the house. After that, they go to a hotel and spend the night there. Georges has a dream in which his mother appears and tells him that he should separate from Harry due to the fact that he has his own life and cannot take care of him. The following day, Harry takes George to the specialized residence where he lives. They both say goodbye, and Harry returns to the city and his work routine. On the one hand, George is sad at the residence, especially when the girl he is in love with tells him that she has to leave the institution. On the other hand, Harry cannot rejoin his laboral dynamics as before because sharing the trip with Georges changed his perspective: Harry feels lonely and misfit now. He can walk over to his swimming pool just as George did. After a while, George and his fellow residents go to a museum because of a cultural visit scheduled by their centre. There, Georges remembers that this day is the birthday of one of Harry’s daughters and starts planning a way of escaping and going there. George and some of his friends steal a caravan and drive to Harry’s place of work, where he is making a coaching. They interrupt the decorum of the room with their excessive behaviour, and Harry goes with them. Together in the caravan, they pick up the girl George is in love with and then go to the house of Harry’s wife. She lives near a closed amusement park. The group enters, turns on its lights, rides, and throws fireworks for Harry's daughter's birthday celebration. The children and Harry’s wife see that, and the father regains his sympathy. Nevertheless, the police arrive since George and his friends have sneaked illegally into the park. Harry and George manage to escape and go to a party. There, George tries to flirt with a girl, but she refuses him, and he starts feeling bad because he feels that he is constantly rejected; he misses his mother and thinks that he is a burden on Harry, although the latter denies it. George and Harry fall asleep on a bench. 
When Harry awakes, George is not there. Harry returns home with his family. George secretly sees the reencounter and, after that, goes to the building where Harry worked. There, he goes to the rooftop with a box of chocolates he had just bought. He eats them and starts singing a song that reminds him of his mother. After that, he jumps over the edge and dies. Although Harry separates legally from his wife, he is reconciled with her and his daughters, and he starts a new life, never forgetting his friend George.