Revenir

They have been always doing that for years:the estranged mother,father, prodigal son or daughter , who comes back ,to her family unit,after a long exile (here in Canada).Here as usual,if we are to believe the screenwriters, Thomas left home because he felt he was not the son his father longed to have .He didn't even come back for his elder brother's funeral .

But now death is about to strike again .Thomas 's mom is dying ,bedridden in the hospital where his desperate father spends all his days ;and on the farm, the boy meets his widowed sister-in-law,Mona, and her young son ,his six-year-old nephew .

One may call the (late in the movie) Thomas/Mona affair derivative ,but it preserves the viewer from despair ,for the atmosphere is gloomy ,in direct contrast with the luminous landscapes.Death is not only a thing of the past ,but it's present again and is expected any day now, the father looks like a living dead ,and the farm is not really thriving.

The past resurfaces ;the death of the older brother was a so-called boar hunting accident ;but one of Thomas ' friends, who saw the scene , affirms it's not what the son's been told.After the mother's death , it's only natural that Mona was panic-striken when her only son disappears .

The father 's future is abeyance : his elder son's insurance soaked up debts , but how can a broken man run a farm on his own , at a time when agricuture runs into difficulties?His daughter-in-law is a waitress in a night club .Her son has made friends with his uncle from faraway at first sight : he does not want his young relative to leave for this land across the ocean.

The title is thoroughly justified:it is a come back ,in every sense of the word, and perhaps , some sunlight does break through in the very last pictures.

Thomas, a young man, returns from Montréal to the farm in the southeast of France where he grew up. He has been away for ten years. His mother is terminally ill and his father is staying with her in the hospital and seems unable to cope with day-to-day chores. Thomas' first impression of the farm is discouraging; livestock have been sold to cover debts, irrigation pipes are in disrepair, and rooms are cluttered and in need of tidying up. Thomas meets Mona, his brother's widow and their son Alex. Mona is trying to manage the farm, with the alternative of losing the land to debt never out of sight. She struggles to provide security and education for Alex, and makes ends barely meet with a job in a nearby town.

The movie is a tale of relationships where, as in real life, motivations are unclear or unseen, characters are known from partial information and feelings (love, gratefulness, the search for security, the need to alleviate one's solitude) mix in unpredictable ways. Thomas renews old acquaintances and friendships and from conversations we learn (perhaps unreliable) stories about the family during his absence. Things don't fall into place neatly; the reasons for Thomas' estrangement from his family are never clear, although there are tantalizing hints involving his father and late brother. The ending is open and all choices are difficult.

All in all, an excellent movie. It garnered a well deserved Venice Horizons Award for Best Screenplay (by the director Jessica Palud, Diastème and Phillipe Lioret) and was nominated for Best Film. Acting is excellent all around, direction is fluid and the cinematography captures the harsh, high contrast summer landscapes of the Drôme, a region near Valence.