Leçon de Vie is made up from a series of separate fragments in which poetic and philosophical themes are portrayed in a charming and dainty way. Even though Boris Lehman himself does not appear on screen (as in his long film Babel – Lettres à mes amis restés en Belgique), yet the scenes still breathe his atmosphere and he is tangibly present in the film. In his work Lehman manages inventively to combine diverse and apparently contradictory issues: fiction and documentary, autobiography and fantasy, humour and weight, cinephilia and amateurism. In this funny and sometimes surprising lesson in life, he suggests that a person should above all know what he is looking at and he then sets a good example with many nice observations. The many different scenes in the film have just as many protagonists. We see the paintings of the painter Arié Mandelbaum, the poet Marcel Piqueray, the composer Jacques Calonne, the philosopher Georges Miedzianagora and in addition André Blavier, Jacques Roman, Fernand Schirren, Henri Colpi, Antoine Bonfanti and many others. They bring a multitude of thoughts and approaches and attempt to communicate. From their loneliness they communicate as it were with something invisible. What they communicate are shouts, song or secret messages. This is all the lesson of life. To become conscious, men and women have to accept that they must lose their innocence.
