Sun
09-Apr-2006

le temps qui reste

We've been to see a few different films from the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival this year. Last night I saw Le Temps Qui Reste, or Time to Leave, a lovely film by François Ozon, in which a young man is given the shocking diagnosis that he has terminal cancer and only months to live. It is a painfully honest look at how one might cope with dying. Romain, the hero of the film, withdraws from everyone around him except for his aging grandmother, sees fleeting hallucinations of his childhood, and becomes increasingly calm as he moves closer to death. It is hard to explain how exquisitely the film conveys the sadness and terror of impending death while also maintaining a light tone and touching on many moments of happiness.

In the final scenes of the film, Romain goes to a beach to swim and lie by the sea, surrounded by families and children playing. He stretches out on a towel and as the families all leave and the sun goes down, he remains there. As the screen fades to darkness and the credits roll there is just the sound of the sea breaking and crashing on the shore. There is no ambiguity, but it is such a good scene. What a perfect way to die, listening to the sound of the sea. It is not just that the beaches are the widest, most open spaces, where you can feel your soul reach up and out to anything that might be there. It is that sound too, the endlessly chaotic play of a million different voices bubbling together in the waves. That is Om – the perfection – when you are listening to the sea, just following the sound of the waves which never form a pattern and never end, until you are completely concentrated on listening and completely empty.