The Broken Circle Breakdown

In Ghent, Didier plays banjo in a bluegrass band and Elise is a tattoo artist. They meet, start playing together and their daughter Maybelle is born. The story, spread over seven years, breaks when the child develops cancer. After her death the two are thrown in opposite directions: Didier takes refuge in science and starts blaming religion openly, while Elise looks for a spiritual explanation. The distance never closes and Elise takes her own life. Felix van Groeningen directed, from the stage play of the same name. The music is the film's second story. Some of the bluegrass is traditional and some was written by Bjorn Eriksson, and the actors play and sing every performance themselves. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 83 percent, with critics calling it an intoxicating, finely wrought romance while noting that its second half sputters more often than it shines. It won the Cesar for Best Foreign Film and the Lux Prize in 2013, and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards. Who it is for: viewers who like music woven into the telling and heavy family drama. Who it is not for: anyone not ready to watch a child's illness and death. The film does not shorten those passages and offers no consolation.