After extensive heart surgery, a retired businessman living in the south of France returns home to convalesce. There he is visited by his daughter Caroline. As his health declines, Caroline is confronted by all the familiar behaviour patterns of her relationship with her mother and father.
This is an exquisite example of cinematic subtlety and understatement from Tavernier, Bogarde and Birkin. Tavernier enables his actors to create an intensely realistic 'family' - proud father, long-suffering mother, loving yet insecure daughter - all struggling to come to terms with the fragility of life. Bogarde and Birkin are deeply moving as father and daughter, clumsily struggling to communicate as adults after a lifetime of parent and child, and Laure provides selfless support, raging silently against the inevitable.
As a study of life's finite nature, this is faultless. As a final outing for Bogarde, it is a fitting and extraordinary tribute to a master-craftsman of the cinema.
This is an exquisite example of cinematic subtlety and understatement from Tavernier, Bogarde and Birkin. Tavernier enables his actors to create an intensely realistic 'family' - proud father, long-suffering mother, loving yet insecure daughter - all struggling to come to terms with the fragility of life. Bogarde and Birkin are deeply moving as father and daughter, clumsily struggling to communicate as adults after a lifetime of parent and child, and Laure provides selfless support, raging silently against the inevitable.
As a study of life's finite nature, this is faultless. As a final outing for Bogarde, it is a fitting and extraordinary tribute to a master-craftsman of the cinema.