Peaceful movie review & film summary (2022)

Deneuve performs Crystal, a fearful mom navigating the terminal most cancers analysis of her grown son Benjamin (Benoît Magimel). Over the course of 4 seasons, as Benjamin’s situation deteriorates, Crystal faces the data that she is going to outlive her personal son and what meaning for the long run. Whereas this angle may have been a extra compelling facet for the movie’s focus, it’s performed out totally on the periphery of what turns into an overstuffed ensemble orbiting round Benjamin.

Segmented by these seasons, the movie’s first three components every start with the oncology division of the hospital exchanging tales of sufferers and their households, sharing their emotional responses, and receiving recommendation from the division’s head Dr. Eddé (Gabriel Sara) earlier than joyfully singing “Lean On Me” in English. Eddé believes in compassionate, empathy-based therapy of sufferers. He wears ties of his affected person’s favourite animals. He believes crying with them is okay. Sara’s heat efficiency is probably the most pure within the movie, which clashes with the extra overly dramatic tenor of the opposite performers. Each time he leaves the narrative, his lack is deeply felt.

As Benjamin, a “failed actor” turned appearing instructor dealing with his personal mortality, Magimel received the César award for Finest Actor. He’s actually doing probably the most appearing within the movie as he goes by means of all of the levels of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, despair, acceptance) after his analysis of Stage IV pancreatic most cancers. In going by means of them, Bercot and co-writer Marcia Romano by no means miss a second to remind us that this man is an artist, who feels issues deeply. 

Benjamin’s appearing class is used to distinction his denial of his impending dying in opposition to the significance of being within the second as an actor. It’s a heavy-handed metaphor in and of itself, but in addition is completed no favors by the very nature of those lessons. Performing lessons are awkward and uncomfortable, designed to push the performers out of their consolation zones and right into a state of pure being. Nonetheless, they’re additionally uncomfortable to observe since you see the method and the work. By seeing the work within the class, it’s onerous to not additionally see the work Magimel is doing in his dramatic scenes with Deneuve.

In a while, after he has shared his analysis together with his class, one in all his feminine college students visits, performing an impassioned, tearful monologue as he lay in a hospital mattress. When he laments that he’s made nobody comfortable, one in all his medical doctors, Eugénie (Cécile de France), feedback that’s not what she noticed earlier. He then remarks that the coed merely has a crush on her instructor. Benjamin’s summing up of his life and his perceived failures on this scene is supposed to be profound, however the dialogue is simply as clichéd as his pupil’s crush.