In a deeply felt performance at the start of Apres Lui (After Him), Camille (Catherine Deneuvre) sends her college student son off to a party and receives a call from the police, hours later, telling Camille that her son is dead. Tears and grieving follow, and a visit to the roadside tree trunk where the accident occurred. She feels the scars on the old tree’s bark. And soon enough, she’s back at her bookshop, throwing herself into life’s routine.
Or so it seems. An odd note is sounded when Camille invites to the funeral the boy who drove the car into the tree, her son’s best friend, Franck. Everyone else cold-shoulders Franck for his role in the accident, yet Camille seems solicitous, eager to heal the wounds. But she won’t let up, pursuing a friendship with the boy that becomes increasingly unwanted.
The 2007 film by French writer-director Gael Morel (out Aug. 11 on DVD) is a fascinating psychological study unfolding at the leisurely pace of life itself, without the false ring of Hollywood melodrama. The slope toward obsession is treacherous and Deneuvre leads her character down it one step at a time.
