Killing Time in the Cemetery

The approach of the documentary "Forever," which opens today at Film Forum, is as beguilingly simple as its subject matter is timeless and mysterious. Filmmaker Heddy Honigmann took her camera round Père-Lachaise, the famed Paris cemetery, and spoke with visitors to various graves, whether resting places for departed loved ones or for beloved artists. The result is a delicate, measured work of unexpected wisdom and hope that preserves the mysteries of love, art, and memory.

Although many know Père-Lachaise for its mystique (or as home to Jim Morrison's grave), Ms. Honigmann is more interested in ordinary people's deeply felt, involved attachments to the dead. In the sun-dappled paths, nooks, and crannies of the cemetery, men and women, young and old, French and foreign, come in communion, love, and tribute. Some sit with Proust, Apollinaire, Modigliani; others remember spouses, parents, and lovers.

"Forever" conveys equally and elegantly the loving devotion of the living to the departed, and the redemptive, revitalizing power of art. One young Asian piano student bridges the divide with her late lamented father by dedicating herself to the works of his favorite composer, Frédéric Chopin. She is at a loss for words when asked to characterize his music, but when she plays, the serenity of her face speaks volumes.

Ms. Honigmann, who poses questions from off camera, visits with many others bottle, while quoting lines from their works and confidentially reciting biographical details of her long-gone literary companions.

As "Forever"rests by each hushed gravestone and its contemplative observer, we move in and out of intense, private spheres of emotion and memory, sensing how the peaceful cemetery as a whole is a sanctuary dense with feeling (and, disproportionately, dedicated women). Yet Ms. Honigmann's patient approach is not intrusive; she finds a tone that is respectful and engaged. For some of her subjects, recounting their stories appears to be another way of keeping their loved ones present in the world and honoring their memory.

The documentary is not limited to interviews in the byways of Père-Lachaise. With a few lyrical asides, Ms. Honigmann explores the idea of absence and coming to terms with death's visceral immediacy and gaping abstraction. The sense of reaching out to connect is palpable in a brief, eloquent visit with three blind friends as they watch a movie at home by listening and constantly commenting to one another. (The film is "Les Diaboliques," starring Simone Signoret, who is buried at Père-Lachaise.)

The trio's enjoyment of "Les Diaboliques" also serves as a casual, day-to-day example of Ms. Honigmann's abiding view of art as part of life. Despite the ceaseless waves of documentaries proclaiming the indisputable uniqueness and vitality of this or that musician, painter, writer, or fashion designer, "Forever" is one of the very few where we genuinely feel how necessary, how much of a lifeblood (or life preserver), art can be.

Ms. Honigmann, a filmmaker not much distributed in this country and the subject of a 2003 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, doesn't queue up experts and personalities to attest to the enduring importance and appeal of great art. She simply elicits heartfelt, tentative responses from people like an expat Iranian cabbie, who carries his commonplace book of verse everywhere, or from a tour guide at Père-Lachaise, who is drawn to the nearly obliterated inscriptions of poetry on a little-known grave.

Probing life, death, and art, a lesser film might have collapsed, but "Forever" is not some grand, airy masterpiece, nor does it aspire to be. Ms. Honigmann's unnerving visit with an intensely focused undertaker (who loves Modigliani) as he retouches a young woman's face returns the film, along with its many mourning interviewees, to the inescapable reality of death. Yet the modesty of "Forever" before its task spares the film the burden of attempting an overarching explanation of that which cannot be simply explained.

Through September 25 (209 W. Houston St., between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street, 212-727-8110).