Time to Leave (18)

After the tricksiness of 8 Women, Swimming Pool and 5x2, France's most prolific young genre-hopper is in a more serious, personal mood in Time to Leave.

François Ozon's latest film is the story of an indecently handsome, 31-year-old fashion photographer, Melvil Poupaud (inset), whose carefree, cocaine-sprinkled existence in Paris is rudely interrupted by the news that he has terminal cancer. Ozon has him withdrawing from life in small, slow steps, along a path that's neither predictable nor sentimental, and which can't fail to put a lump in the throat. There's nothing very exciting about it, though. At the end, after Poupaud has cried, hugged relatives, and got reacquainted with his inner child, you realise that he's covered much the same ground as a schmaltzy Hollywood terminal illness film, only more quietly and in French.