This film is the stuff of everyday real life in the Western World. It is beautifully portrayed by a French cast and intimately connects its audience with the reality of love, grief, guilt and the flow of life.
Sandra (the wonderful Lea Seydoux/ The Grand Budapest Hotel/ Spectre) is a young widow living in a small apartment in Paris with her eight year old daughter.
She works as a translator and cares for her father Georg (veteran actor Pascal Greggory), a retired philosophy professor with a neuro-degenerative disease called Benson’s Syndrome, who is nearly blind. She remembers him as he used to be when his entire life was dedicated to thinking. And she feels that her love life is behind her.
Georg’s health detiorates and he needs full time care. After a hospital stay and with the help of Françoise (Nicole Garcia) her long-divorced mother, a long search is started for a nursing home that will provide good care at an affordable price.
There is a chance meeting in the street with Clement (Melvil Poupard) an old friend who is a cosmo chemist who travels the world collecting space dust. This leads to a passionate affair and the joy of new love.
Clement is married and they part because he can’t find the courage to leave his wife and son.
As Sandra’s grandmother says in a brief encounter “It’s a bit difficult at times, living”.
Acclaimed director/writer Mia Hansen-Love (Bergman Island/Eden) makes films close to her own experiences. The idea of this film was based on her father, who died soon after it was written, with these actors in mind for the main roles.
The clever 35mm cinematography is by Denis Lenoir.
It was the winner of Best European Film at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
112 minutes.
Now showing at Luna Leederville.
Watch the trailer…
