It’s a long time since a movie so quickly became what I’m sure will ultimately be one of my permanent all-time faves, and this one has been sitting in my must-see queue for far too long, almost a year which is crazy considering how long and how badly I wanted to see it following various recommendations.

To me, this is one of the best versions, if not the best version, of the “Lolita story”. I have to explain what that means to me because I know some would be quick to disagree because of all the controversy about the “original” Lolita and direct adaptations thereof. I use Lolita as a shorthand for any story that has this complicated type of relationship between an older man and younger girl… some are sexual, some are not, but they all bring something to the table of what I think one of the most important discussions to be had, and Sundays and Cybele brings heaps to that table.

The movie’s closest recent relative is probably John Duigan’s Lawn Dogs, which bears the same unique quality as Sundays in that the relationship concerned is immediately made somewhat more “appropriate” by the older man being a kind of child himself, a victim of the horrors of war resulting in amnesia. He comes across Cybele (whose name is never actually given until a crucial moment at the end; one could argue the French original title would probably make the whole thing more poignant) sort of accidentally but the nature of his attraction is immediately clear… there’s nothing lecherous here whatsoever, just a lonely man who finds happiness in a beautiful child’s face and then finds that she needs him too. Of course, as in life, not everyone sees it that way.

There is a beauty to the second act, which mostly concerns the man’s regular Sunday meetings with Cybele, which I haven’t seen in a long time and is hard to put into words. As they walk along the river in what seems to be a constantly thickening haze, sometimes seen in the reflection of concentric circles on the water surface (“We’re in our home now,” Cybele says over this image), I lost myself in this movie as I have in few others, and truly didn’t want it to end. Though the movie takes a tragic turn, it’s these earlier, happier scenes that will stay with me, like the best kind of summer romance movies, you almost feel like you had an affair with Cybele too, and no matter where the movie ends, nothing can take those moments away. Cybele not only refuses to tell anybody else her real name at the movie’s emotional climax, but denies the name given to her previously by the orphanage, leaving us the viewers as the only ones left who really “knew her”. Like I say it’s a rare film that breaks through the screen and touches me so powerfully.