Pialat places the horror and sadness of a dying parent within a placid palette and the natural light of Auvergne, only barely softening the edges of the uneasy struggle between eros and thanatos. Based on his own marriage and mother’s death, Pialat’s film portrays not simply the grueling physicality of one death, but a family of deeply wounded people who all seem to be waiting for some kind of release from the interminable emotional violence of their lives. Pialat’s equivalent in the film, Philippe and his parents are forced into a reunion of sorts within Philippe’s childhood home, where his mother must retreat after an unspecified, terminal diagnosis. Like his father, Philippe responds to his existential despair through sexual liaisons, continuing to hurt his wife as she wounds him verbally. The expressionless, open eyes and mouth of the dying woman communicate a larger, unarticulated sadness and anger that no one is able to directly acknowledge or repair. Pialat’s deep silences, precisely placed sounds, and patient camerawork—including a few striking, intense long takes that are as uncomfortable as they are tender—culminate in a surprising final shot that is moving, in both senses of the word, and, as with much of Pialat, derives its intense emotional complexity from an overwhelming, aching simplicity.