After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, a cynical fashion photographer chooses to forgo treatment and keeps his illness a secret from everyone except his grandmother. He spends his remaining days alienating his loved ones while ultimately seeking a sense of immortality through a unique encounter with a stranger.
Melvil Poupaud delivers a stunning, layered, and deeply complex performance in TIME TO LEAVE (Le Temps qui reste), written and directed by the ever-provocative French auteur François Ozon (known for 8 Women, Swimming Pool, and more).
Poupaud plays Romain, a selfish, self-obsessed fashion photographer who gets hit with the brutal news: terminal cancer. Determined to keep it secret, he viciously dumps his boyfriend Sasha (Christian Sengewald), humiliates his sister Sophie (Louise-Anne Hippeau), and flat-out rejects his doctor’s suggestion to try chemotherapy. The only person he lets in is his grandmother Laura – the legendary Jeanne Moreau – long estranged from the family for what they deemed “inappropriate” behaviour after her husband’s death.
Knowing his clock is ticking fast, Romain wanders the world with a small digital camera, capturing quiet, tender moments that stand in stark contrast to the glossy, high-fashion shoots he’s built his career on. He finds real comfort only with his grandmother, while to everyone else he remains cold, distant, and almost deliberately cruel – as if he’s refusing to let himself rediscover life or love in his final days. Hauntingly, he keeps seeing himself as a child (played by Ugo Soussan Trabelsi) – the past bleeding into his fragile present.
Beautifully acted, sharply written, and emotionally fearless, TIME TO LEAVE – the second chapter in Ozon’s planned trilogy on life and death (after Under the Sand) – is a challenging, gripping film that builds to one of the most quietly magnificent endings you’ll see.
