On her 92nd birthday, Madeleine announces to her children that she plans to die. She feels more and more tired, is in pain and doesn’t want to become a burden to those around her. So she has planned to die in a few weeks. First as much in shock as her big brother, her daughter Diana decides to listen and respect her mother’s choice. Finally she agrees to support Madeleine during her last few weeks.

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There are two movies in The Final Lesson. The first one is brutal and honest, dealing with the controversial subject of assisted suicide with surprising directness. The second has more in common with a bad TV movie, full of crappy dialogue and clumsy directing. And so the story swings between these extremes, as evidenced by its two leads: Marthe Villalonga, touching in a difficult role, and Sandrine Bonnaire, whose artificial acting drags the movie down. Director Pascale Pouzadoux is more at home in light and popular comedies like Changing Sides or La croisière. Here she moves along fearlessly to the end of her story without yielding to the pitfalls of its dark subject matter, but ends up with a truly dumb, awkward wreck of an unbalanced movie.