With his four-year-old son, Antoine, the crux of the film and his wife the co-writer, The Son of… brings the autobiographical simulacra of Pialat’s work to uneasy closure. Filming in his own home and surrounds, the director employs his most recurrent actor, Gérard Depardieu, to play the Pialat counterpart as well as perhaps a bit of Depardieu (he is named Gérard and Depardieu’s wife at the time, Elizabeth, plays Gérard’s ex-wife, who is named Micheline, the name of Pialat’s ex-wife). At the center of the troubled, yet tenacious, web of connections within Pialat’s imperceptibly time-shifting mirror world lies the painfully complicated father-son relationship within which Gérard’s affections are by turns grandiose, jealous, unpredictable and controlling; his primary obstacle to maintaining a bond with his wife and son remains himself. The title actually refers not to Antoine, but to Gérard’s father, to whom his wife Sophie, rather than he, has formed an affectionate attachment. Amid the shards of Pialat’s wounded creating more wounds, a new, stable household for Antoine may actually be forming, which is a first in Pialat’s cinematic family album.