Last Dance

Director: Delphine Lehericey (Switzerland, Belgium). Year of Release: 2022

A family home which is full of bustle. The “adults” are in a mild state of panic, and keep fussing around their father Germain, who was doing fine before they brought all their chaos into his house. Neither does he look at all impressed by the stairlift which someone commissioned, even though he’s perfectly capable of walking up and downstairs. Meanwhile, Germain’s wife Lise has gone missing. How could she miss out on a family get together because of her secret project?

A few days later, when Germain is in the living room and Lise is in the kitchen unpacking the shopping, she falls down dead. This puts the family panic-makers into overdrive. They organise an elaborate colour-coded rota, so that Germain is never on his own. His neighbour, Elisabeth, comes round every day with food she has cooked for him. Germain either piles the food in the fridge or gives it to the cat. The cat does not look particularly impressed.

This is all light fun, if your idea of fun is watching an upper-middle class family get a bit too far up itself. But we are just about to come across a Plot Contrivance. It turns out that Lise’s Secret Project was to attend and take part in sessions of a modern dance troupe. And their performance is due in a few weeks. But, the Contrivance has got it covered. Germain and Lise had made a pact that, when one of them dies, the other takes over their current project to the end.

For whatever reason (something to do with Plot), the director of the dance ensemble decides not just to accept Germain into the troupe, but also to change the focus of their piece. The dance will now be about Germain’s life and the tragic experience of losing his wife. All very interesting on an artistic level, but, as at least one of the dancers points out, they have got just four weeks until their first public performance, and it’s not as if Germain has done this sort of thing before.

In early rehearsals, Germain is one step behind the other dancers, his eyes trained not towards the audience but to the other dancers so that he can copy theis moves. He is ungainly but – what do you know? – he gradually builds up enough talent to deliver a passable performance. Whether the message is that we all have the potential for greatness, whatever our age, or that some modern dance performance don’t really depend on talent, is up to the audience’s interpretation.

As all this is going on, a subplot emerges. Germain’s family encourage him to mentor a young school student, which they insist will be good for his mental health. This subplot never really leads anywhere, other than reinforcing what we know already – that Germain’s kids don’t understand him at all, and that he has much more in common with the generation below them, or at least he would if he weren’t such an irascible sod.

We also see this in Germain’s relationship with his granddaughter Lucie. One of the dance troupe, Samir, has been assigned to get Germain up to speed. For reasons which are not strictly speaking believeable, Germain and Samir end up in his house with their tops off and arms around each other when Lucie bursts in. Being not as highly strung as her parents, Lucie is pretty nonchalant about her granddad’s “special friend” before he explains to her what they are up to.

For all this, it’s difficult to dislike Last Dance, which trusts itself to put older characters centre stage, and is clearly full of good will. At the same time, it comes with a huge dollop of sentimentality, and there are no great surprizes. This is, apparently a comedy, but there are not many jokes. It is nice to follow the good-natured Germain, who gives off the air of a man who would rather be on his own, but there are few, if any, laugh out loud moments.

This is all perfectly fine, and I guess we needn’t expect any more than this. At best, Last Dance is a reflection on grief, particularly on how the loss of a loved one affects someone who is increasingly aware of their own mortality. But this is perhaps to attribute it with a profundity which isn’t really present. For all that Germain’s bedtime reading is A la recherche des temps perdu, the film relies a little too much on stereotypes and cliché.

We get it – Germain’s family and his neighbour fuss about him too much. They are too enconsed in their own middle class bubble to realise that their father actually has thoughts and feelings of his own. But this is nothing that is particularly original or deep. You don’t have to tell us again and again. The film works inasmuch as Germain is a genial enough character, and it is pleasant spending time in his company. The moment it tries to say anything, it shows off its vapidity.