Time to Leave 2005

Time to Leave 2005
Le temps qui reste (original title)
1h 21min | Drama | 16 May 2005 (France)
Storyline:
In Paris, thirty-one-year-old gay fashion photographer Romain learns he has a terminal cancer. As chances with chemotherapy are only slim, he chooses to live the rest of his life without treatment or mollycoddling, hiding the truth from his lover Sasha and his family, being cruel to kindly push them away. He visits his estranged grandmother Laura for a few days and has a small talk with a waitress he chance meets along the way, a waitress who, upon a second chance meeting, asks him for an unusual favor. Romain returns to Paris where he privately puts his affairs in order and awaits the end.
User review:
François Ozon (Water Drops on Burning Rocks, 8 Women, Swimming Pool, 5X2) is one of the most fascinatingly talented French directors on the scene today. His films have a simplicity, a direct approach to the mind and the heart, and an extreme respect for both his actors and his audience – factors that allow him a means for communication that is rare and proves he has few equals. In LE TEMPS QUI RESTE (Time to Leave) he addresses that earth-shattering moment of being informed that death is imminent and shows us how one character copes with that information and how it changes his remaining days and his history of relating to others.
Romain (Melvil Poupaud) is a handsome and successful fashion photographer who is gay, has a lover Sasha (Christian Sengewald), but is somewhat estranged from his family. For some reason he cannot relate to his pregnant sister Sophie (Louise-Anne Hippeau) despite his mother's (Marie Rivière) pleading and his father's (Daniel Duval) distance. During a fashion shoot Romain faints, is taken to the doctor (Henri de Lorme) who informs him he has metastatic cancer for which there is little hope (except for chemotherapy and radiation therapy) that he will live past a few months. Romain opts to go without treatment and begins to face his remaining life with silent gloom. After a very sensuous sexual encounter with Sasha (Ozon holds nothing back in depicting this!), Romain decides to quit his job, tells Sasha to leave, separates from his family, and visits his beloved grandmother Laura (Jeanne Moreau, as exciting an actress as ever!) who shares her philosophy of living and dying and bonds even more closely with the grandson who mirrors her own life. Her sage wisdom is what grounds Romain.