Those which remain

Those which remain is a film carried out by Anne Ny, left to France the August 29th 2007.

It puts in scene the relation which is woven between a man and a woman, “those which remain”, in a hospital, where the wife of the one and the companion of the other are neat for cancers.

Synopsis

In a hospital francilien, Bertrand comes each day to see his wife, who has suffered for five years from a Breast cancer. He meets Lorraine, whose companion is reached of a Cancer of the colon, and who to soon proposes him to deposit it in the car each day to avoid a long way in the bus to him.

German professor, Bertrand Liévain lives with the girl of his wife, Valentine, 16 years, which hardly loves his/her father-in-law and with which the relations are surging. Graphic designer, Lorraine Grégeois had known for one year his companion and had moved in with him for a few months.

According to the presentation of the press kit of film, Bertrand and Lorraine “are those which survey the corridors by raising questions prohibited, are made locate with the newsstand, speak too extremely at the cafeteria, and will smoke in hiding-place on the roof of this hospital where their couple are made look after. Because to support the culpability to be quite alive, Bertrand and Lorraine decided to help itself to live, laugh and continue to like. ”

Although their characters and their reactions to the disease of their close relations differ much - does all for its wife to him and forsakes her daily own life for a long time, it is distressed with the idea not to be with the height for his/her companion and wants to continue to live -, Bertrand and Lorraine gradually will pass from a friendship of circumstance to another relation.

Whereas the state of his wife worsens and that it has evil to say it to his daughter-in-law, Bertrand receives the visit of his Nathalie sister, which is meant much better with the teenager, and of his family.

Data sheet

Title: Those which remain
Réalisation: Anne Ny
Scenario: Anne Ny
Photography: Patrick Blossier
Assembly: Idit Bloch
Sound: Nicolas Cantin, Beatrice Wick, Cédric Lionnet
Decorations: Yves Brover
Costumes: Nathalie of Roscoat
Original music: Beatrice Thiriet
Associate producer: Jean-Philippe Andraca, Christian Bérard, in coproduction with StudioCanal - France 2 Cinema, the participation of Canal+
Lasted: 1:34

Distribution

Vincent Lindon: Bertrand Liévain, German professor
Emmanuelle Devos: Greek Lorraine, graphic designer for reviews of data processing
Yeelem Jappain: Valentine, 16 years, the daughter-in-law of Bertrand
Anne Ny: Nathalie, the sister of Bertrand
Gregoire Oestermann: Jean-Paul, the husband of Nathalie
Christine Murillo: Suzy, the commercial one of newspapers
Ophélia Kolb: Jennifer, the saleswoman of the point-press
Apolline Bouissières: Myriam, girl of Jean-Paul and Nathalie
Agathe Bouissières: Benedicte, girl of Jean-Paul and Nathalie
Frederic Pink: the civil servant of the hospital
Théo Frilet: Romain, the boyfriend of Valentine
Pierre Gerard: Thierry, the father of Valentine (he lives in Toulon)
Xavier Guittet: a taxi driver

Around film

the sick couple of the two main characters never appear with the screen. The camera always stops with the threshold of their rooms, and will not return in one, towards the end, only when it is empty.
Emmanuelle Devos and Vincent Lindon had formed a couple with the screen in the Moustache of Emmanuel Carrère (2005).
Anne Ny, author of film, tells: “I like much film of David Lean Brève meeting . In a purely theoretical way, I often wondered: what would make that today, seen the evolution of manners, a history of love as that one would be always impossible? By excluding of course the exceptional historical circumstances from the type “it is Bosnian, it is Croatian…” because it is the modesty of the history which I like more in this film: married people, ordinary, who live an ordinary daily newspaper. Passion their tomb above and for them, that does not have anything romantic: it is a catastrophe which will devastate their life. (...)

I thus decided to reduce to the maximum the angle of attack by taking a certain number of parties taken: one would see neither the patients, nor the doctors and one would remain in the places less “medicalized” of the hospital: cafeteria, not press, carpark… And of course I also applied this party taken to the dramaturgy: I generally choose to be in the echo of the crisis rather than in the middle of the crisis. For example, the character of Lorraine is discovered whereas she already learned cancer from her companion and right after she cried. In the same way, if a scene offers the least possibility of comedy, it is the point of view which I propose. The subject passes very close to already the mélo, I wanted to thus avoid the Pathos to the maximum. ”

Characters

the author explains: “As I have more evil to design the male characters, I decided, by pure perversity, to always place me from the point of view of Bertrand, interpreted by Vincent Lindon. It is him whom one constantly follows whereas one never sees the character of Lorraine, played by Emmanuelle Devos, in his daily life, out of the hospital.

For Bertrand, I deliberately left the stereotype: a type with the John Wayne, honest, virile, a little bear, on which one can always count. (...) I am struck to see the number of films, still today, where the women must pass by the sacrifice and the negation of themselves to reach the heroin statute. Lorraine does not want any to conform to this model and it very frontally tackles the question of the obligatory sacrifice. ”

the elocution of the two characters is contrary to many former roles and of the natural Diction of the actors: Anne Ny stresses that “contrary to Vincent, Emmanuelle, in the life, has a flow posed enough whereas Lorraine is a character rather “speed”, they were thus obliged both to go against their natural rate/rhythm of elocution. ”
the director had evil to choose an actress to play Lorraine. “I did not find the actress who corresponded exactly so that I had written and I badly had already not sought when one of my producers gave me a council very right: to forget the character a little and to think simply of the actresses whom I love. I immediately quoted Emmanuelle Devos, but the role did not seem to me for it and then I did not dare to ask him to carry out tests.

Finally, Emmanuelle read the scenario and agreed to audition. It immediately was so much although I passed all turning to excuse me to have made him pass these tests! ”

Critical reception

For Télérama “Emmanuelle Devos, out of thrown into a panic butterfly, whirls in all directions not to fall and is knocked in a Vincent Lindon on the contrary with the idle, exhausted and weighed down, very moving in a purified interpretation.

For her first realization, Anne Ny did not seek the facility. This actress, often seen on television, with the theater or in supporting roles at Agnes Jaoui or Pierre Jolivet, seizure his subject with decency and a lethal weapon: humor. Without the least wrong note, it seizes each occasion to reduce the matter, as in this scene of breathing, a family barbecue where the adults affairent themselves while complaining to miss the first steps by the babies, while the last-born child of the gambade family suddenly in the general indifference…

Beyond of a poignant history of love missed, Those which remain is also the chronicle of a carnivorous culpability. (...) Never car-tears, turning the back on the pathos savagely, the film puts in scene characters who upset us with counter-current: our emotion is born from their fight not to let itself submerge by theirs. ”

Le Monde estimates that “the subject is not insane originality. One already saw many times similar idylles, that the protagonists find themselves morning and evening in the train which connects their work place to their residence of suburbs ( Falling in Coils , with Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep) or that they live one close to the other, neighbors subjected to adulterous temptation ( the Woman of at side , of François Truffaut, the Feelings , of Noémie Lvovsky). (...)

One can on the other hand carry to the credit of the scenario writer and scenario writer a certain number of radical choices: patients and doctors are absent from image; tears, flashbacks and scenes of the professional life of the two heroes are proscribed. Anne Ny approaches an original topic: that of the anguish, of the test of the ways and visits which fall down on the couple of the patients or dying men. (...) Rythmée by the ways, bus, the RER, the tricks of the unvoiced comment, the evolution of unavowed complicity, then cumbersome for Bertrand, finally essential to the point to push the character to come to the hospital without another reason to cross Lorraine, involves an emotion, contained. The composition of Vincent Lindon, bear with principles, is not there for nothing. ”

External bonds

'' Those which remain '' in IMDb
Entretien with Anne Ny on Those which remain (extracted the press kit)
Revue critics of film in the site As with the cinema

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