Early August 1014, Jean Martin, a primary-school teacher in a small village in the Auvergne, has to go to war. He leaves his wife, Elise, and their two children, Camille and Arthur.
Things get off to a good start: he joins his friends in the barracks with whom he did his military service. Any lack of enthusiasm for the task ahead is made up for by good fellowship.
In the evening he writes a letter to Elise. She answers. Through their letters their story is told, the comic and tragic aspects of the war years, of love and revolt, of tenderness and despair.
Letters to Elise offers a shattering testimony of the Great War and depicts, not the official pictures of the great moments of history, but an intimate and touching family drama.
