Forever

Heddy Honigmann's Forever has good intentions. The 95-minute documentary about the importance of art in life as told through the visitors to famous graves within Paris, France's Pere Lachaise cemetery has a lot of unrealized potential. The setting remains fascinating, and as the director demonstrates throughout her study, Pere Lachaise, one of the world's most infamous cemeteries, remains rich with characters both living and dead.

However, Honigmann seems incapable of harnessing all of her content and, worse, she often drifts off her central thesis so much so that Forever often seems pointless, flighty and downright erratic. A core cast of characters evolves early on in the film, including a young pianist whose special relationship to Chopin comes about in memories of her dead father. Then, there's a decidedly odd yet gripping middle-aged woman who seems to make it her life's work to ensure that the graves of the greats are cleaned, the plants watered and their life stories immortalized.

But most fascinating are the widows, a group of women who discuss life in Paris after fleeing from Franco's Spain. Their lives had little to do with art (the graves they visit are not well known) and more represent the freedom Paris seemed to offer after leaving their homeland. Had Honigmann made the documentary only about them and left the more mediocre subjects on the cutting room floor, Forever would have been much better.