Benjamin, in his late forties, has just learned that he has inoperable pancreatic cancer. Devastated, her mother, Cristal, cannot bring herself to see her only son leave before her. And yet, she has no choice. For his part, Benjamin tries to deal with the inevitable with the support, in addition to that of his mother, of a caring oncologist. Co-written and directed by Emmanuelle Bercot, In his lifetimestars Benoît Magimel and Catherine Deneuve, whom the filmmaker has already directed twice each.
In this regard, the interpretation is, unsurprisingly, well held. As a man who knows he is condemned, Benoît Magimel moves. A passionate theater teacher, his character has real depth. As a grieving mother who takes refuge in denial, Catherine Deneuve is just as touching. The scene where she reads a word of encouragement written by her son to the students is a small moment of grace because it is Deneuve, the immense one, who enjoins these aspiring actors to dream.
The film itself oscillates between melodrama and clinical realism. Unusual, the mixture could have been conclusive, especially since the filmmaker is now used to integrating a strong societal connotation into her plots. So the movie Heads up was he interested in a judge in the juvenile court determined to help a teenager almost unwillingly, while The girl from Brest recounted the fight led by a whistleblower pulmonologist against a pharmaceutical company.
In both cases, an almost documentary approach to the medium depicted resulted in a certain didacticism. This is, alas, still the case in this most recent film, In his lifetime, who now sees Emmanuelle Bercot taking an interest in the hospital context as the scene of the protagonist’s early end of life.
Even that the filmmaker raises the bar of realism a notch by doing more or less his own role to Doctor Gabriel Sara (renamed Doctor Eddé in the film), a real oncologist whose unorthodox treatments for patients at the end of their life go through music and speech. This shutter and this character obviously want to be as authentic as possible.
Big strings
Unfortunately, the other part of the film, which occupies the greatest narrative part, turns out to be quite the opposite. That is to say, this story of a mother and her son facing the latter’s imminent death remains fictitious when it should have been poignant. The strings are too big and the situations, too fabricated (the sudden romance with the doctor: help!), Even sometimes basely manipulative in their desire to tear up tears.
As assumed as it may be, the melodramatic approach, where the drama is by definition “amplified”, swears with the hyperrealist inclinations mentioned above. As a result, a shock rather than a fusion of genres occurs.
The result is a film, certainly endowed with good intentions, but wobbly.