On their way back from the ocean, three surfers have a car accident. Among them is Simon, who falls into a coma. His mother Marianne sits next to him at the hospital in Le Havre, in the vain hope he will wake up. A few hundred kilometers away, in Paris, a mother with a weak heart waits for a transplant to prolong her life...

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Transplanting a heart to end one life and give new breath to another: organ donation is a veritable breeding ground for melodrama, which director Katell Quillévéré (Love Like Poison, Suzanne) makes liberal use of to interconnect the destinies of several people in this adaptation of the novel by Maylis de Kerangal. By multiplying the characters, she avoids bogging down the narrative with expected and inevitable scenes, preferring to subtly evoke distress rather than exploit it. De Kerangal gets much support from an impressive cast, from leads to supporting roles, including Tahar Rahim, Anne Dorval, Emmanuelle Seigner, Dominique Blanc, Bouli Lanners, Finnegan Oldfield, Kool Shen - as well as Alice Taglioni and Monia Chokri (favorites of Xavier Dolan). However, despite its magnificent title, Heal the Living is too light and conventional to be really captivating. Devoid of any real flaws, it also lacks real strength and depth.