Just to Be Sure

Carine Tardieu's film is set in Brittany. Erwan, played by François Damiens, clears mines for a living, and a medical screening prompted by his daughter's pregnancy reveals that his father is not his biological father. He goes looking for the real one and finds him, and around the same time it emerges that the woman he has met and fallen for may be his sister. On paper this could become either a catastrophe or a farce. Tardieu does neither. The film proceeds calmly, warmly, almost quietly. Erwan's relationship with the father who raised him is not weakened by finding the biological one; its meaning changes, and the film's best scenes are the ones with both men in the same room. Cécile de France is in the cast. Pierre Cottereau shot it and Éric Slabiak wrote the score. It screened in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes on 20 May 2017. Who it is for: viewers who like courteous French family comedy and François Damiens. Who it is not for: anyone wanting sharp humour or a real crisis, since the film keeps softening its conflicts.