Metrograph

One of the most unflinching portrayals of a death in the family and its immediate aftermath, and one of the most devastating: a film that feels like it was wrenched out of its makers’ guts. Upon learning of his mother’s fatal illness, Philippe and his wife (Philippe Léotard and Nathalie Baye) join her and his father (Monique Mélinand and Hubert Deschamps) at their shop in rural Auvergne to pass her final days together, the presence of her sickness suffusing every room. Néstor Almendros wrote of his first collaboration with Pialat: “[He] can make up to 40 takes of a shot, until a spark of life comes into it, at times, in ways the actors and even the director himself might not have foreseen. For this and other reasons, working with Pialat is exhausting. But the reward is the certainty of having collaborated with an artist whose independence and sincerity are carried almost to the point of madness.”

Distributor: Cohen Film Collection