Life paralleling the past & present, coming together to represent endless trauma, love affairs as a means of breaking apart the structures you set your life upon. Delivered by fantastic performances, agnès jaoui essentially leads the entire film, showcasing a sense of genuine sensuality, but one plagued by intense heartbreak and hope to revive that sense of progress in the downfall of life itself. The direction from laurent bouhnik is one classified by pure, locked-down, classical filmmaking that this type of cinema lives on, separating the 3 different time periods with a sense of distinctive presence, yet always feel embedded in the characters and the atmosphere. The look of the movie is quite glorious, the lighting is very understated and focused, the light comes from overhead making the skin feel shadowed with a purposeful nature. The screenplay comes from bouhnik and taurand is always focused on character, and trying its best to blend the time periods, the structure perfectly goes back and forth, and the understated affections to each scene is all about the underlying trauma, a heartbreaking film because it is always focused on a neverending broken turmoil that is seemingly generational. It lingers long after seeing it, seeing how aging is a process that will just break apart our lives and love is just something we get close to, but never reach.
