Le dernier jour

In this fatalistic portrait of a dysfunctional family, everyone is weighed down by a great secret. Protagonist Gaspard Ulliel is fascinating as the vulnerable and yet stubborn 19-year-old student Simon, who returns for the Christmas holidays to his childhood home on the coast of Brittany. Apart from his suitcases, he has also brought along a girl he has just met in the night train: Louise. The relationship between Simon and Louise is unclear; they sleep together, talk and quarrel, but they are not lovers. Gradually, Louise spends more and more time with a childhood friend of Simon, who is now a lighthouse keeper on the island. The tension in the household rises. Simon and his mother – beautifully played by Nicole Garcia – get on well together, but his father is a stranger to him. Father and mother share long silences, as often happens when people have been married for a long time, but when they talk, it’s more a question of screaming. And then there is the alcoholic writer who stays in a local hotel and adds his own contribution to the suspense. The continuous threat of inevitable conflict is tangible – already a trademark of Marconi as a director, in this case accentuated in a virtuoso way in the art direction, the music and the acting. (SdH)