Jacques Peyrac

During the French Revolution, a surprising company shares a coach, trying to catch up something - the time itself, perhaps.

Formal portraits, bookends in this 80-year saga, enclose the central story, which opens with the baptism of Carlo, a baby in his grandfather's lap, and ends with Carlo as a grandfather with a baby in his arms. And never once do we get out of the house, whose rooms provide structure. Comfort or passion? Carlo can't really decide until it's too late.

Set in 1960, the year of the Rome Olympics, a 13 year-old boy with aspirations to become an athlete befriends an ageing, disabled bus driver who understands his ambitions.