Salaud, on t'aime (2014)

To reconcile his best friend Jacques Kaminsky with his four daughters—Printemps, Été, Automne, and Hiver, born from four different relationships—Frédéric, Jacques’s personal physician and also his best friend, tells the women that their father has an incurable illness and has little time left to live. Kaminsky, a former war photographer, is seeking peace and quiet far from Paris with Nathalie, his latest partner, in a sumptuous chalet he recently bought in the Alps. It is presided over by a tame bald eagle (which the director tries to pass off as a golden eagle), and the bird has given the property its name: Eagle Estate. Although he suspects nothing, he sees the strange coincidence of these reunions with his children and grandchildren as a promise of reconciliation after his turbulent past and all the years he neglected them. But these seemingly festive days take a turn as the lie is uncovered. Through generational conflicts and revelations, lies and truths, this shattered family becomes embroiled in an intrigue: Kaminsky had a daughter in Cuba, Francia, born before the other four. Once the conflicts have died down, Jacques asks Frédéric for the truth. Is he really ill? Could the lie be a way of gently breaking some painful news? Frédéric replies, “You smoke like a chimney, but you’re in great shape!” Shortly afterward, Jacques is found hanging from a tree trunk lying across a path in the forest, to the great dismay of the whole family, who arrange his funeral with great emotion. But when winter arrives, Frédéric returns and tells Nathalie that Kaminsky actually died from a blow to the head, and was hanged afterward to make it look like suicide. Frédéric said nothing because he wanted to protect the four daughters, one of whom he suspects may be guilty and protected by the silence of the other three (after all, during a fit of anger at a meal, the youngest had said to her father: ). As the daughters divide up the proceeds from the sale of Eagle Estate, Frédéric reveals the real reason for Jacques’s death. Once their surprise has passed, they leave one by one, furious that anyone could suspect them of murdering their father. It is only later that the identity of the culprits is revealed: after a hunting trip with the new owner of Eagle Estate, one of the hunters drunkenly admits that he and his companions killed Jacques, who had threatened to report them for poaching. The film ends with the opening of an exhibition of photographs of cows taken by Jacques, held in a church and attended by his four daughters and Francia, who has since returned from Cuba. During the opening, Nathalie asks Frédéric whether Jacques was really ill. He simply replies, “I won’t hide from you that his last medical checkup was disastrous...”