A meditative, strangely beautiful documentary about the importance of art in life, Forever is set principally at France's fabled Pere-Lachaise cemetery. At Pere-Lachaise, visitors show up daily to pay their respects at the graves of everyone from Chopin and Moliere to Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde. Although running just 98 minutes, director Heddy Honigmann's film could conceivably go on for hours, even days. (It would make a fantastic gallery installation piece.)

One middle-aged man relates how his grandfather first introduced him as a kid to Pere-Lachaise and how he learned his math by calculating the dates of birth versus years of death on tombstones. Another frequent visitor, commercial illustrator Stephane Heuet, offers an exegesis on the works of Marcel Proust. Not surprisingly, Heuet has made it his life's avocation to draw Classic Comics-style illustrations of Proust's novels. There's something indescribably moving about people sharing their memories of artists, composers, singers, et al, they never knew physically - only in a spiritual sense through their work. Sometimes that's enough.

A young South Korean man brings cookies to Proust's grave as a tribute to the author's ineffable "madeleine." An embalmer whose blocked tear ducts prevent him from crying regularly visits Modigliani's grave and describes how/why the painter is his on-the-job muse. In one of the most curious scenes - and one of the few which takes place outside the gates of Pere-Lachaise - two blind men "watch" a video of Clouzot's Les Diaboliques and comment on the action ("One can feel the net tightening!"). Honigmann's later cutaway to the conjoined graves of Diaboliques star Simone Signoret and husband Yves Montand sends a shiver down the back of your neck.

Not all of the graves belong to famous people either. Many of the Pere-Lachaise faithful are elderly women lovingly tending to their late husbands' graves. For Honigmann, death is truly life's great equalizer.

Forever: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 22, at Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, 11141 East Blvd., Cleveland, 216-421-7450.