This is a film that is slow in developing but not without losing its grip. It is not boring unless you are 18years old. Actually, this is a mature film for mature viewers who understand the complexities and bliss of mid-life relationships that are further complicated by the loss or disability of a steady partner whose patterns are well learned and experienced along that long path. Long relationships lead to an acceptance and craving for shared performance, habits and body language - either good or bad. In long-term relationships, bad times are blended with the best. All bad times are without risk. <br /><br />As others have commented, Marie (Charlotte Rampling) has lost her husband Jean (Bruno Cremer) in a low-keyed holiday trip to their seaside residence in southern France. We do not know much about them other than it appears that their relationship is either strained or okay. We learn those elements not in high-level drama but one of progressive mental torture going on in Marie's mind - particularly after Jean disappears beachside while Marie is basking on the sand.<br /><br />This script is a tiptoe dance between the real and unreal; between sanity and insanity; between a temporary mental aberration induced by bereavement and the need to retain the memory of a life-partner at all cost. Perhaps, what we see is just a short slice in time or worse, something more permanent.<br /><br />We will never know that answer. <br /><br />We only know the experience that Director François Ozon created that has an open ending.