Director: François Ozon

Stars: Sophie Marceau, André Dussollier, Géraldine Pailhas, Charlotte Rampling

Adapted from a memoir by late collaborator Emmanuèle Bernheim, Ozon’s latest is a moving if slightly mannered family drama with stabs of wry dry humour. After the eighty-five year old André (André Dussollier) suffers a debilitating stroke, his daughters Emmanuèle (Marceau) and Pascale (Pailhas) are distraught to learn that he wants to end his life via assisted suicide. He asks Emmanuèle to facilitate this by contacting an organisation in Switzerland. As she gradually comes to accept his decision, Emmanuèle reflects on her less than idyllic childhood. Then, as André’s health and spirits gradually improve, the daughter hopes for a change of mind. Also in the mix is Charlotte Rampling in a characteristically chillily withdrawn role as Andre’s estranged artist wife. The familiar upper middle class Paris milieu, where everyone dresses in M&S smart casuals, topped up with a just so accessory, and where main money issues revolve around inheritances and financing the latest art gallery opening, feels a little rarefied. The fusty feel is compounded by the muted brown and grey-ish colour scheme. Still, this being Ozon, it’s elegantly assembled with sparing but judiciously-selected fantasy sequences and flashbacks, and the cast are excellent, especially Dussollier who conveys an impish charm behind André’s despair, and the conclusion is disarmingly poignant.