Tout va bien, on s’en va is a French film first released in 2000, directed by Claude Mouriéras.  The film stars Michel Piccoli, Natacha Régnier, Miou-Miou, Sandrine Kiberlain and Laurent Poitrenaux.  It has also been released under the title: Everything’s Fine, We’re Leaving.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


Three sisters living in Lyons find their lives disrupted when their father, Louis, re-appears unexpectedly after an absence of 15 years.  The two elder sisters, Laure and Béatrice, both independent and strong-willed, resent the fact that their father abandoned them and their mother.   Claire, the youngest, an aspiring pianist, wants to forgive her father, but by doing so she risks alienating herself from her elder sisters on whom she is dependent.  In the emotional tug-of-war that ensues, the sisters fail to see that their father is losing his memory...

Claude Mouriéras’ third film is a poignant work which examines the fragile relationship been an estranged father and the three daughters he walked away from when they were young girls.  Guilt, resentment and pity come to the fore in the emotional fireworks which flare up when the father attempts to re-enter his children’s lives.  An exceptional cast gives a convincing portrayal of a traumatic situation which is becoming increasing familiar in modern life, as an ever-growing number of families break up before the children attain adulthood.

As the film illustrates, a whole host of factors can conspire to prevent parents and children from being reconciled.  For the parents, the overriding concern may be a sense of guilt for the errors they made in rearing their children; for the children, it may be a long-standing bitterness (conscious or sub-conscious) for the pain caused by these errors.  The relationship between parents and their grown-up children is inordinately complex, and surprisingly few films have tackled this with as much insight and honesty as other human relationships.

Whilst Claude Mouriéras’ film is both moving and realistic (with a soupçon of Gallic humour to lighten the tone), its artificial ending prevents it from being entirely satisfying.  In a sense, the film tries to do much – it attempts to tell the story from too many points of view (the father and the three sisters), and really fails to do justice to either perspective, with the result that the whole thing ends up feeling a touch inconsequential.  The main reason for watching the film is Michel Piccoli’s sensitive portrayal of a man suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

© James Travers 2003

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