The Mouth Agape

One of cinema’s greatest and most profound meditations on mortality, THE MOUTH AGAPE observes, with striking unsentimentality, the final days of a terminally ill woman (Monique Mélinand) as those around her—her philandering husband (Hubert Deschamps), aloof son (Philippe Léotard), and worried daughter-in-law (Nathalie Baye)—attempt to carry on with their lives as they await the inevitable. Through unflinching long takes, Pialat crafts a masterpiece of human observation that says as much about life as it does about death.