How can you accept the inacceptable: the violence of war, death, the loss of your beloved? Hubert Leutze is a taxidermist at the Natural History Museum in Paris. The Algerian War and its collateral damage caused him to lose the woman he loved, Hannah; and the loss has pushed him to think about the unthinkable: preserving her body as a flesh statue to keep her near him for eternity.

The photographer Emmanuel Lorne gets to know Hubert. Soon after they become friends, Emmanuel discovers the terrible secret that Hubert has been hiding in a secret room. The shock leads Emmanuel to ask himself dizzying questions: how far do you have the right to go to preserve a beloved person ? Later, isn’t he dong the same thing, when he dots all of his exhibits with portraits of Laura Bloom, the woman he loves, whose body has been broken ?

In a gentle maze of a novel, Philippe Renonçay intertwines the political upheavals of the last century with the private pain of personal tragedy to portray the universal feelings of helplessness and confusion when confronted with the unbearable unfairness of the loss of a loved one.

Les Portraits de Laura Bloom is evocative of Pasolini throughout, but is also reminiscent of Modiano for the Parisian atmospheres.