Saw this film in a plane last year and remembered it when saw it in eiff programme. So that's a good sign. Seriously though, it is a good movie, nice to watch with family.

A remarkably poignant narration of a family’s story told through the cinematic device of five individual days spanning 15 years. What follows is an elegiac unfolding of the closest of personal relationships with all the human complexities of parenthood, siblinghood and painful coming of age.
That Bezancon's movie hardly introduces more than the featured five principal cast is testimony to the tightness of the script. Despite spanning the childhood /early adulthood of the younger cast, the action focuses unwaveringly on the fortunes of the protagonists and is never distracted by supporting characters.
Like all families, humour and tragedy are two sides of the same coin and neither are far away. The movie has moments of farce that wouldn't seem out of place in a Richard Curtis Rom-Com, but just when you expect Hugh Grant to appear, there will be a twang of undeniably Gallic style reminding us that this movie could only be made in France.
The sheer passion of the familial relationships - feelings running high to both extremes but never settling for dull indolence- is something that feels uniquely continental and it's hard to imagine a family from Cleethorpes (or Forfar, for that matter) having the same energy or brooding vitality. Even as a 16 year old, Deborah Francois teems with a barely repressed desire to engage with the world and all that it entails. It is fitting that her character should provide a conduit from the bump seen in her mother's belly in the opening credits, through her own personal and sexual awakening to the next generation and continuation of the heritage.
The film succeeds in moving the viewer equally to tears of joy and sorrow but still finds time to make subtle points about the nature of the family bond, the nobility of sacrifice and notably that sometimes what is felt most deeply cannot be expressed in mere words but is added to the tapestry of a lifetime's experience and may only ever be revealed through the fickle finger of fate.

Well-observed french family montage comprising a section of film each for the five main leads. The obligatory 'philosophical outdoor lunch in rambling country house with family and friends' French movie scene is replaced by a taut, more-defined focus on the family alone, and the cultural differences, particularly in individual emotional expression, translate well onto the big screen. Although it meanders along without offering any particularly original insights, some memorable vignettes (eg running over squirrels and successive storm-outs during dinner) pepper this highly-watchable film. A solid 7/10.