Un rayon de soleil (S)

A warm sunny day. Encouraged by his affectionate family, an arthritic old man goes out for a wheelchair ride, in the care of an undependable attendant. The attendant unthinkingly “parks” his charge by a bench and saunters cheerfully into a bistro. Left alone, the old man – until then immobile and reacting to very little – is unexpectedly brought to life by his exposure to the sun, and especially by his vicinity to an unknown beauty who has chosen the nearby bench to sit down for a spot of reading. Such is the effect of this combination of pleasurable stimuli that all the man’s aches and pains go away; getting up from his wheelchair and sitting next to the girl, he rediscovers his gallantry, chatting her up with no little vigour and apparently making some progress. On the journey home the initial roles are reversed: standing firm on his own two feet, the former invalid pushes the wheelchair on which his alleged carer now slumps, blind drunk.