A film about dying, but much more about love. About the peace one can make with life and death. A sad, but above all a comforting and touching film that owes its existence to a very special doctor, den the director Emmanuelle Bercot met at a film screening in a New York hospital. The charismatic Dr. Not only did Gabriel A. Sara inspire the story, he also stars (under a different name) himself. As in earlier films, Bercot enriches her narrative with amateur actors who bring the experience of real everyday hospital life into the fictional construction.
At the beginning of the film there is a meeting with the doctor and his team from the oncology department, in which the intensive experiences that the staff has with the patients are discussed and processed. A nurse shares how unfortunate she was to see a patient die shortly after sending his partner home. The doctor comforts her, assuring her that people make their own decisions about when to leave and that sometimes it’s easier for them to do it alone. The sick person needs permission to die, the greatest gift one can give him is to tell him: “You can go.” A committed doctor in a hectic hospital environment, who can take his time and rest for his team, for his patients and their relatives: one would wish for such a sensitive companion and guide in the event of an emergency.
The mother wants to know everything from the doctor, the son still shies away from the facts
On the same day, Benjamin and his mother Crystal (Benoît Magimel and Catherine Deneuve) come to his office hours to talk about the 39-year-old’s serious cancer. End-stage pancreatic cancer. While his mother wants to know what’s coming, Benjamin shies away from the facts. It will be a while before he can face the truth under the guidance of his doctor and consciously go his own way.
As a counterpart to the team meetings in the hospital, there are the rehearsals in which Benjamin and his acting students prepare for the entrance exam for the conservatory. Like any artist, he uses his work to explore his own existence and its limits. In pairs, the students should work out scenes of a final farewell. He relentlessly drives her deeper and deeper into the emotional depths of this experience.
There are brutally honest films about people who have to die prematurely, like “Stop on the open road” by Andreas Dresen. And tear-jerking shreds like “Love Story” or “Time of Tenderness”. Emmanuelle Bercot takes a middle ground. “Leave in love” is honest and doesn’t embellish anything, but still spares the viewer the physical decline, the misery of illness and ailment in the pale neon light. Because Bercot tells this existential drama as calmly and truthfully as she approaches the other things in life as a director. By showing the process of dying as a viable path, the film can definitely be understood as helping people to live and die. Because the mission to make his method better known, with which one can enable people to say goodbye peacefully and without fear, was a major incentive for the doctor to take part in this film in an advisory and acting capacity.
De son vivant, France, Belgium 2021. Director: Emmanuelle Bercot. Book: Emmanuelle Bercot, Marcia Romano. Camera: Yves Cape. With: Benoît Magimel, Catherine Deneuve, Dr. Gabriel A. Sara, Cecile de France. Studio Canal, 122 minutes. Theatrical release: January 20, 2022.