Cannes (AFP)

With "De son vivant", the French director Emmanuelle Bercot who brings together Catherine Deneuve and Benoit Magimel for the occasion, signs a touching tale of an end of life, which comes to an end naturally, against activism in favor of the 'euthanasia.

Presented out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival and applauded at the end of the official screening, the film tells the story of a man condemned by cancer who, after a phase of denial, tames his imminent death to come, for finally the accept.

At the same time, "While alive" evokes the suffering of his mother in the face of the unacceptable and the exemplary dedication of the doctor who accompanies them both in the ordeal.

"The film is not at all a documentary neither on the disease nor on the hospital", underlined Emmanuelle Bercot in front of the press.

"I love crying in the movies. It's a total jubilation for me. I write things that will make me cry. Lots of people reject the melody. It's in the elegance and intelligence of the interpretation actors that it does not fall into the vulgar pathos ", she added.

The mother-son duo formed by Catherine Deneuve and Benoit Magimel, whose characters are confronted with the unacceptable, works wonderfully.

At 77, the actress returns to Cannes a year and a half after a stroke: "I'm fine and I'm happy to be in Cannes!" She confided on Sunday afternoon, visibly completely discount.

This health problem interrupted filming for several months.

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"With this terrible thing that happened, the situation took on a dimension and a force which made me see things very, very differently ...", replied Catherine Deneuve to a journalist who asked the actors if their relationship to death had changed with this film.

Unexpected interpreter of the film, oncologist Gabriel Sara, stationed in the United States, plays his own role: with great sensitivity as he assures to do in real life, this doctor finds the words to accompany his patient in an exemplary way and mother of the latter, both medically and philosophically.

Emmanuelle Bercot knows that her film will be criticized: "they will tell me that this is not how it happens, that it is an ideal world, that if the doctors were like that, and the hospital rooms if large and so beautiful, that would be known ... ".

"I wanted something bright and positive, that we come out with an even greater desire to live. May this film which speaks of death be a hymn to life," explains the director.

"The film absolutely does not claim to restore reality. You can see a tale in it, if you want to ...".

© 2021 AFP