From 1912 to 1922, while Marcel Proust lay in his bedroom, scribbling out his masterpiece about lost time on frayed pieces of loose-leaf paper, a young French housekeeper, Céleste Albaret, waited patiently in the kitchen for “Monsieur” to ring. She was the wife of Proust’s chauffeur, and waited fifty years before telling her story. Céleste understood Proust as few others did, and over the years slowly took over the running of his life. The film is simultaneously a convincing depiction of the artist at work and a study of master and servant, feudally free with each other within the limits both accept. We see the writer in all his childish posturing and dedicated flory through Céleste’s loving eyes. As Céleste says, looking at us calmly, “Monsieur is looking for truth. I act as his hound.” Alexander Walker of The Standard says, “It must be the finest literary movie, in the best sense of the term, ever made.”