This French film examines possessions and legacies, and what happens when someone passes. The family matriarch, now in her 70s, has an impressive collection of art and decorative furniture in a beautiful country house outside of Paris. Her three children, now coupled adults, have their own commitments and are unable to visit her often. When she does pass, the children differ over how to deal with her estate, which she has left to them in equal thirds. The eldest son wants to keep his mother's legacy intact, and because he remains in the area imagines that the family will continue to revolve around the house. The other two children don't live in France anymore - they live in China and the US, and for them it becomes impractical to own a home in the Parisian countryside. The children struggle to appropriately allocate their mother's estate, and ponder what to keep and what to allow to pass.
For me, the film spoke about the life that animates the things we own - and that things become valuable because of the sentimental value we affix to them. It also showed the way spaces become invested with meaning. A scene at the end of the film is particularly poignant, as one of the granddaughters throws a party at her grandmother's house the weekend before the house transfers to its new owner. As she walks with her boyfriend through the nearby fields, she reminsces over how her grandmother taught her how to pick berries there. She remembers her grandmother telling her, "Someday you will teach your daughter to pick berries here." Now that future is lost.
This film is a thoughtful, yet realistic look at grief and legacies and how we move on in life. It is an interesting film at this point in my life, with endings and new beginnings and trying to make sense of it all...
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