The patient, deeply humane tone that distinguished Conversations with My Gardener and My Afternoons with Margueritte is on show in the new film by veteran French director Becker which concerns a middle-aged curmudgeon whose enforced stay in hospital forces him to re-evaluate his life.
In its opening scene, a tourist-postcard view of the Seine by night is interrupted by a squeal of tyres and a scream and Pierre Laurent (Lanvin) falls headlong into the water.
Fished out and recovering in hospital, he's prey to recurring nightmares, not least in the form of a real-life teenage slacker (Jabeur), who's always pestering him for his laptop.
Various other characters come in and out of the hospital room where virtually all the action takes place: a gutsy nurse (Tagbo); his rescuer (Arlaud), with whom his relationship proves to be far from straightforward; an old girlfriend (Lapix); an investigating cop (Testot) with needs of his own; all serve as reminders of the mistakes and omissions that have characterised a self-absorbed life. "I don't believe it," he says. "I'm going soft in here."
It sounds heavy and obvious and certainly it is closer to the formulaic Margueritte than the ineffably subtle and delicate Gardener. Becker, now 83, the son of the titanic mid-century director Jacques Becker, is painting with a broad brush and there are some broadsides at the French public health system (de Lencquesaing as a preoccupied doctor; Rebbot as a lunatic physio) that don't travel too well. Meanwhile, the ubiquitous Darroussin as Pierre's cigarette-smuggling brother seems suspiciously like he's landed one of the jobs for the boys.
