This portrait of a young healthy-looking gay man who learns that he only has a few months to live because of cancer tries hard to be taken seriously but failed to make me care about the lead or his condition. This film is a ‘weepy’ and has all of the stereotypes of a death film. Death versus birth, sunsets, reconnection with family and past lovers, etc. The biggest compliment I could give the film is that the lead is attractive and that his illness isn’t AIDS. Romain’s homosexuality really has nothing to with anything in the film, which is the way it should be. He is gay and treated as straight. That said, I know that the lead, Melvil Poupaud, is a straight man, and he plays his character like a straight man in the film. I never bought that he was ill, either, until towards the end when he rapidly lost a bunch of weight and is limping around the city. The film is pretty shallow and portrays impending death as a time to remember when you were a boy and nothing more. He has flashbacks to when he was about 8 or 9 years old, and only that age, and it’s handled in an excessively sentimental way that I thought was begging for my tears. Yes, there was a time when he was young, healthy, and had his whole life ahead of him, I know that, it’s in every other ungood film about a dying character. The best character in the film is Sasha, Romain’s ex. He is victimized by Romain’s moods and never knows of his affliction, which I thought made his relationship and break-up with Romain more interesting, especially their reunion toward the end of the film. But their relationship, like Romain’s relationship with his father, sister, and grandmother are all underplayed. The climax of the film involves Romain deciding to impregnate a girl he has just met whose boyfriend is sterile. This all makes sense until the boyfriend is involved in the conception, shown as a threesome that is confusing, silly, and empty. After this and Swimming Pool, I’m hesitant to give Ozon another chance.