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François Ozon follows his darkly sensual melodrama about queer first love, Summer of 85, with a pivot back to sober dramatic territory in Everything Went Fine, which doubles as a gesture of gratitude toward the late novelist Emmanuèle Bernheim, his script collaborator on Under the Sand, Swimming Pool and 5×2. Taking a refreshingly frank, uncomplicated attitude to its fraught issues, the film stars Sophie Marceau in a compellingly grounded performance as Bernheim, asked to take on a role of tremendous moral and emotional weight by a man with whom she has always had a somewhat thorny relationship and yet finds impossible to deny.

The other actor who elevates the intimate drama is veteran André Dussollier as Emmanuèle’s father, André Bernheim, a cultured art collector whose vitality continues to peek through his distress even after the stroke that leaves him semi-paralyzed. He makes the unbending decision to end his life rather than...