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[Highly rated reviewer]

angst à la Frog

No Anglo-Saxon filmmaker would be able to get away with a work like this without being laughed out of the business; but the French can do it, somehow.

Here you have an obnoxious and contrary, utterly self-centred and unapologetically arrogant protagonist dealing with the sudden and unexpected diagnosis of a terminal cancerous tumour.

Some of the plot developments are too pseudy and downright sillly for words (like agreeing to father a child with a motorway-café waitress whose husband is sterile), and it verges on being an American-indie-style melodrama: plinkety-plonkety pedalled-piano chords, a bit of French baroque sacred music to contrast with a squalid gay dungeon, that sort of thing. But when it works, it works very well indeed and it is, on the whole, a moving and interesting film.

Beautifuly shot, honest and moving

Beautifully shot – as befits a film about a photographer – Ozon’s film looks hard at how we might deal with an unexpected death sentence from cancer and comes up with some surprising results. Well acted, deftly cut (and wonderfully not drawn out to 2hrs) this is well worth seeing.