Notre Dernière Danse
2026 · 2m
Directed by Marie Couzelin
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
After a funeral, Yves returns home with his son, who hands him a gift from his granddaughter before leaving. Alone, Yves opens the package and is swept away by a moving memory of overwhelming beauty.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Two minutes of a widower opening a box—no twist, no subversion, just grief doing what grief does. I'd normally hate this, but Couzelin commits so fully to the sentimental premise that it becomes almost defiant in its refusal to ironize the moment; that's the only interesting move here, and it's too small to save it.
A formally restrained meditation on memory and loss that trusts the viewer absolutely—the packaging of the gift, the pause before opening, the cut to the memory itself become a studied rhythm that sits squarely in the lineage of Koreeda and Haneke. This is craft aware of its own tradition, and the economy of two minutes proves Couzelin understands exactly where the power lives.
The entire film hinges on the decision to cut *into* the memory rather than show Yves's face receiving it—that single editorial choice transforms a domestic moment into something transported, and on a two-minute budget, that's the whole architecture right there.