THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
Gladly tasting a certain cruelty in the choice of his subjects (Backstage, 2004 ; Heads up, 2015 ; The Girl from Brest, 2016), Emmanuelle Bercot often spares good relief affects. It is the thousand power of this mechanism that reaches In his lifetime, which falls into the category, oh so formidable, including for the spectators, of “melo oncology”.
In this regard, the director chooses the frontal method, starting her film with the clear and clear condemnation of the patient by the practitioner who tells her about his case (stage four of pancreatic cancer) and thus sets the framework, not particularly comfortable, of his fiction: what support can be envisaged for the convicted person?
The only “reasonable” answer for a filmmaker – except to inflict a searing slap in the face of the audience and possibly sign a masterpiece (see in this regard Cries and whispers, Ingmar Bergman, or The Open mouth, by Maurice Pialat) – consists in pouring hectoliters of heat, love and presence onto this filth of disease, making the film an uninterrupted geyser of benevolence and “care”. This can be understood, while at the same time conceiving of the obvious limitation of the process.
In the role of the recumbent Benjamin, Benoît Magimel offers himself here as a sacrifice. Partition complicated to keep – between understatement bravado and progressive cadaverization – than that of an absolute victim of fate, touched by the double scandal of incurable disease and anticipated age, which means that we start before those who gave birth to you.
A ballet of sweets
There must be a ballet of sweets, around this icy and bottomless abyss. They are in abundance. The mother (Catherine Deneuve), who dispenses her last tenderness to her son over the edge of her pain. The oncologist – Gabriel Sara in his own role, Lebanese oncologist leading the chemotherapy unit at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York – who is developing a method of not only physiological, but also total emotional management. The assistant of doctor Sara (Cécile de France), who falls physically under the spell of Benjamin. An enamored student of the theater school where Benjamin teaches. Last but not least, the son of Benjamin, never recognized by his father, and whose actual entry into the service where the latter is dying is the subject of a suspense carried out until the end of the film.
The film falls into the category,
oh so formidable, of the “melo oncology”
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