Chronic

David is a home nurse who cares for the terminally ill. He does the work with extraordinary attention, washing, lifting, talking, listening. But the closeness runs past what the job requires, and his own life is empty enough that he starts telling his patients' stories as though they were his. Michel Franco keeps the camera distant, still and unscored. The care scenes are not cut away from, because he has no other method for showing what it means for a body to be in somebody else's hands. Tim Roth plays almost the entire film without speech, working through gaze and posture. It competed at Cannes in 2015 and Franco won the award for best screenplay. The most argued over element is the ending, which severs everything the film has accumulated in a single stroke. Some critics called it a cheap shock, and the annoyance is understandable, though it does not actually contradict the film's own logic. Who it is for: cold, distanced, difficult cinema. Who it is not for: anyone in search of consolation.