Stéphane Brizé didn't fall into the melodramatic trap which always needs to be highlighted especially when dealing with such sensitive subjects as euthanasia and the end of life.

The performances of Hélène Vincent and the ageless Vincent Lindon are absolutely accurate and truthful, and if the two are very good, it's clear that the introverted, very sober, almost silent role of the latter didn't allow him to fully express his potential.

Moreover, and even if it's poignant, this is a "spectator" movie that won't please everybody. There is not much of a plot, it's pretty slow, everything is in the details and suggestions, and it even sometimes resembles a documentary because it adopts a strong observant posture, and this passivity is probably what serves the film badly and will leave a part of the viewers on the side of the road.

Alain Evrard cannot stand with his mother's simple habits, which are the habits of someone used to take care of herself and of her household. The way she cooks, put the food on the table, eat methodically etc. He can not stand the worry of his mother with his person, when she asks him about his job and plans to get a job. He cannot stand with the worry of someone who wants to take care of him. He cannot deal with a spontaneous relationship with a girl friend he meets at the bowling club. In other words, he is unable to exchange feelings with another person. His mother is not particularly effusive, yet she is a good person and seems to the spectator as a person with whom it is perfectly possible to cohabit. His girl friend would like to improve the relationship with him, but fails because of his attitude of refusing to do the steps which would lead to the improvement of the relationship. This situation lasts until the very last moment of the life of his mother: when she is dying, both cry, sobbing, embracing each other strongly and confessing that they have always loved each other. The title suggests that those moments where a springtime. I don't think so. I think that it's rather the sad awareness of what they missed during their lives, and I think that this is the whole meaning of the story: how to live a whole life of solitude not developing love relationships with those who are close to you and are ready to correspond. So, I would put the title "a whole life of solitude".

Could it be we ask ourselves that what Terence Rattigan described as - and exploited in his plays - the English Disease, by which he meant an inability to express emotion and/or repression, has crossed La Manche and is now living happily in La Belle France or is it perhaps more likely that Stephane Brize admires and is influenced by Rattigan, just as, for example, another fine French director, Alain Resnais, admired the English dramatist Alan Ayckbourne. No matter, however he arrived at it Brize has made a magnificent film virtually plot less with two actors who should, by rights, have taken every award open to them but did, of course, wind up with nothing. Like Louis Jouvet Helene Vincent's first love is the theatre, in which she has distinguished herself many times, unlike Jouvet she has not had the good fortune to appear in a string of classic films but if A Few Hours Of Spring were her sole appearance on film it would be more than sufficient to secure her place in the pantheon. Co-star Vincent Lindon has appeared in some very fine movies and does so yet again as the middle-aged son who, on his release from prison, is obliged to live with his mother thus reigniting a lifetime of bitterness. He soon discovers that his mother has a terminal illness and has made arrangements to enter a Swiss clinic and end her life peacefully. Still there is no overt emotion and when Lindon acquires a girl friend of sorts in the shape of Manu Seigner he is unable to communicate with her also on anything remotely resembling an emotional level. Brize is not afraid to tell his tale slowly with long takes and cutting at a minimum - when, for example, Lindon spots Seigner in a supermarket car park and walks over to her their entire conversation is in mid shot from a fixed camera position where other directors would have been cutting back and forth between them. Until now I had thought that Brize had peaked with Not Here To Be Loved - another film which was little more than a two-hander with supporting roles - with an honourable mention for Madmoiselle Chambon but this one is light years ahead of both. Not for everyone but highly recommended just the same.