サンドラは、パリの小さなアパートで8歳の娘リンと二人暮らしをしながら、通訳者として働いている。父のゲオルグは哲学の教師だったが、病で視力と記憶を失いつつあり、サンドラは別居する母フランソワーズと共に父のもとをたびたび訪ねては介護にあたっていた。育児、介護、仕事で息をつく暇もないサンドラだが、旧友のクレマンと偶然再会し、彼と恋仲になる。彼女は恋にときめく一方で、病を患う父に対するやるせない思いを募らせる。
興行収入: $1,380,392 (2億円)
※製作費・興行収入はTMDBのデータを参照しています。収支は(興行収入 - 製作費)で算出したFindKey独自の推定値であり、広告宣伝費や諸経費は含まれません (1ドル=150円換算)。
監督: Mia Hansen-Løve
脚本: Flora Rumpler / Mia Hansen-Løve
制作: ダビド・ティオン / Philippe Martin / Gerhard Meixner
撮影監督: Denis Lenoir
制作会社: Les Films Pelléas / Razor Film Produktion / ARTE France Cinéma / BR / MUBI / Dauphin Films / CN6 Productions / Zack Films
"Sandra" (Léa Seydoux) is at a crossroads in her life. Her ageing, academic, father (the scene-dominating Pascal Greggory) has been diagnosed with a neuro-degenerative disease that is pretty much robbing him of his quality of life. He is an acclaimed philosopher who finds his increasing lack of ability to think and to remember exasperating. Meantime, she also reconnects with her old friend "Clément" (Melvil Poupaud). He delights in being called a cosmo-chemist (he studies meteoric dust using a rather impressive mass spectrometer). It's clear from the outset that these two have the hots for each other and, despite the fact that he is married with a young son, they embark of quite a lively affair. She is juggling her affection for him while struggling to find an adequate facility for her father; he is having a crisis of conscience as he falls more deeply in love but has his own family to consider. That's about the height of it. Even with the underlying - and rather depressing - analysis of the care provision for her elderly and increasingly failing father adding some gravitas to the film, the story itself is all a rather lacklustre drama centred around two people who are actually quite selfish. They both have responsibilities and as you'd expect, as their relationship develops, these become predictable millstones that we can anticipate all too readily. It has aspects of a soap to it, and though both leads are easy on the eye, I don't think either really have enough here to allow their characters to develop nor to really engage with an audience that has seen this sort of narrative unfold many, many, times before. It looks good - the filming and performances from the younger children are very natural, but at the end I was wondering what was different here. It will work fine on the television, but I doubt I will remember much about it in a fortnight.
