Et doucement rallumer les étoiles (2023)

Laure and Vincent are a deeply loving couple, living happily and quietly with their two daughters, the twin sisters Camille and Marie, who are about to celebrate their birthday. But on the very day of their birthday, Marie takes her own life by jumping from a cliff near Cassis, after swallowing sleeping pills and weighing herself down with a lead belt. Nothing had seemed to foreshadow this tragedy: Marie’s parents, her grandmother Geneviève, her friends, and the teachers at the high school she attended had noticed no warning signs. The only person who had picked up on a few signs of the teenager’s distress was her twin sister Camille, but they were very subtle. Laure sinks into a terrible depression, and no one can pull her out of it—least of all Geneviève, who was not a good mother to her and whom Laure has always refused to call “Mom.” Vincent seems to be in denial and keeps busy doing renovation work in the attic. As for Camille, whom no one pays attention to, she realizes that everything is about Marie and goes to live with her grandmother Geneviève. In the end, it is Geneviève who manages to bring Laure out of her stupor by speaking openly with her for the first time about the death of Laure’s father, a subject that had never been spoken of and whose weight Marie may have carried. Geneviève tells Laure how deeply she regrets what happened and begs her not to make the same mistake she did, and to remember that she still has another daughter, Camille, who is struggling and needs her mother. She concludes by saying that some things can never be made right. These words bring Laure back to life, and for the first time she calls Geneviève “Mom.” Laure goes to the high school to get Camille, asks her forgiveness, and begs her to come home. The young girl manages to rebuild her life, thanks to her family’s love and the help of a boy from school, who encourages her to go to the cliff from which Marie jumped so that she can exorcise her sister’s ghost by shouting her resentment at the sea: “How am I supposed to live now? Every time I look at myself, I see you! I’m alive and dead at the same time, and I’ve had enough! You take up all the space—you always have! You forgot that we loved each other! I’ll never forgive you! I hate you!” She then speaks openly to her parents: “Dad, Mom, I look like her, but I’m not like her. I think I’m stronger than she was. I want to live; I love life.” Vincent has finally finished renovating the attic and shows Camille her new bedroom, with a large window above it through which she can see the stars.