Heal The Living is a visceral experience. It is also an anti-drama that describes the way in which life is out of its characters’ hands. Protagonist, antagonist – these divisions don’t exist. We watch people – before, during and after.
Based on the popular French novel, Réparer les vivants by Maylis de Kerangal, it begins in a bedroom at daybreak with a young man, Simon (Gabin Verdet) sneaking out of bed leaving behind a sleeping young woman. He takes her photograph with his phone before slipping out through the window. The director Katell Quillévéré keeps the view through the window in frame as Simon makes his way to ground level, retrieves his bike and pedals away. Before long he is caught up by a male friend on a skateboard. They exchange glances. They travel at the same speed, not competing with one another, which I may say is not very male. Daniel Plainview may once have said ‘I have a competition in me’ (see There Will Be Blood); these guys disagree.
They join some friends and head for the sea, where they surf. This is their raison d’être – their reason for being. On the way back, there is an accident that leaves Simon brain dead.
When organ donation is mentioned, Simon’s father (Kool Shen) reacts angrily. Then he accepts it. The momentum that drove Simon in life seems to continue to the inevitable transplant.
The possible recipient is Claire (Anne Dorval), a mother who attends the concert of an old (female) friend. Claire requires help to get to her seat. She asks an usher to literally carry her up the stairs. There is the suggestion that she has made her peace with life. She is not expecting second chances – yet she gets one.
In the finale that will have you squirming in your seat – I needed air afterwards – we see the operation.
Summarised in this way, there doesn’t appear to be much to Quillévéré’s film. There are a few scenes with doctors (Tahir Rahim and Bouli Lanners play two of them) but this isn’t a drama about moral quandaries – why a young male heart should be transplanted into a late middle aged (lesbian) woman. Rather it is about aesthetics – the beauty of it. We have read poems about the splendor of creation; this is a film about the triumph of repair.
The film extols a philosophy: of course we should help in death as in life. We should not allow sentimentality to get in the way of the good.
Heal the Living is an uplifting film that isn’t interested in your tear ducts, rather your brain. It is a film about the arrogance of ego, in which the ensemble cast give unselfish performances that don’t make a claim for your empathy. They don’t need to.
Heal The Living is out 28th April!
