Co-scripting with Christophe Honore (whose second film was the unsettling Oedipal blow-out “Ma mere”), Morel presents Camille (Deneuve) as an unpretentious and vivacious divorcee who runs a classy bookshop in Lyon.
Opening sequence has son Mathieu (Adrien Jolivet) and his best buddy, Franck (Thomas Dumerchez), frolicking in wigs and women’s clothing in Mathieu’s bedroom. Turns out they’re straight lads dressing as girls for a classmate’s bachelor party. Chummy Camille helps them with their mascara and lipstick and sends them on their way.
Later that night, the police call with news that Mathieu is dead. Stunned, Camille phones her daughter, Laure (Elodie Bouchez), who’s three months pregnant. Camille’s ex-husband, Francois (Guy Marchand), joins her at the hospital to identify the body.
After the funeral, as mourners gather at her apartment, Camille is drawn to the spot where the boys hit a tree. Franck, who was driving the car but wasn’t injured, is making his own bereaved pilgrimage, and Camille brings him to the wake. The second they arrive, it’s clear she’s the only one who thinks he belongs there.
Camille proceeds to make Franck, the hunky tattooed son of Portuguese workers, into her pet project. She insists on hiring him to work in her bookshop and tries to anticipate his every need for a radiant future. Mathieu was enormously important to both of them and now he’s gone. –Variety
