Film review: ‘BON VOYAGE, MARIE’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
The bittersweet comedy/ drama, Bon Voyage, Marie was one of the hits of the recent French film festival. Through the deft touch of its director Enya Baroux and fine work from its cast, the film manages to be wryly amusing and charming despite addressing the grim subject matter of end-of-life decisions and assisted dying.
Helene Vincente plays elderly Marie who has been battling cancer for eight years. Having been told by her doctors that the remainder of her life will be spent in pain she has opted to travel to Switzerland to undergo voluntary assisted dying. Knowing her bumbling, oafish son Bruno (David Ayala) would not endorse this decision, she concocts a story that a relative in Switzerland has left them an inheritance and they have to travel their to sign the necessary papers. She also ropes in patient transport driver Rudy (Pierre Lottin) and virtually blackmails him into helping her. As mother, son, teen granddaughter Anna (Juliette Gasquet) and reluctant Rudy make the 500 km journey to Switzerland this sets up a fractious, funny and at times painful road movie in which family issues and personal dilemmas come bubbling to the surface.
The film makes an interesting companion piece to the movie I reviewed last week, the excellent Brazilian film The Blue Trail which looked at a slightly reality-shifted dystopian version of Brazil virtually imprisoning elderly people and another older woman’s difficult choice about her final years. Accordingly, there are some genuinely moving moments in Bon Voyage, Marie as the family members are forced to confront the reality of Marie’s situation. Baroux is careful, however, to avoid showing Marie in too much pain or distress and doesn’t depict too many medical procedures.
The film leavens much of the drama with comedy that mostly feeds off the character’s neurosis and oddball personality traits. Some of the funniest moments come from the temperamental son Bruno whose low self-esteem sees him frequently fly into a tantrum. Lottin, who’s a dead ringer for 90’s era Mike Patton from Faith No More, is also amusing as the socially inappropriate driver who thinks nothing of stealing a small child’s floaties to give to Marie.
Performances strike a nice balance between realistic and quirky with each character believably flawed but still likeable. There’s a fairly familiar redemption arc for the misfit Rudy but Lottin has such charisma he prevents the character from becoming cliched. There’s a particularly touching performance from Gasquet as 15-year-old Anna who struggles to come to terms with grandma’s decision. Helene Vincent, who is able to speak volumes just with facial expressions, is also wonderful as Marie.
Assisted dying is of course an extremely fraught topic and the filmmakers don’t present it as an easy answer but impressively, they manage to build a charming, human story around this agonising situation.
Nick’s rating: ***1/2
Genre: Drama/ Comedy.
Classification: M.
Director(s): Enya Baroux.
Release date: 29th July 2026.
Running time: 97 mins.
Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.