LA CONSULTATION

Luc Perino, a doctor specialising in tropical diseases, and who has worked in China and Africa, opends the doors of his practice in Lyon to two cameras which reveal him and his patients in their everyday dealings. The office of Dr. Luc Perino is like a small theatre that will never cease to surprise him with its widely diverse cast of patients. Passionately interested in anthropology, a humanist, Perino observes the evolution of society and refers viewers to their own relationship to their bodies and to illness. Advocating a number of traditional values, his role is no longer confined to resolving clinical cases, but to diagnosing the ills of anxious human beings by deciphering the patients often confusing symptoms which he calls «life illnesses». These individual consultations, coupled with an acknowledgement of the doctors' current powerlessness, reveal the weaknesses and sensibilities of patients via their colds, depressions and alcoholism. Never falling into the trap of improper voyerism, Hélène de Crécy treats her subject with respect and restraint.