Hélène Vincent is a treat as a devoted grandmother who isn’t quite what she seems in this understated French tale of family dysfunction

When François Ozon reins in his default setting of extravagant camp, he creates some of his most satisfying dramas. This spry little French-language picture, which delights in subverting our expectations and leaves us with teasing questions about culpability and a crime, shows the director at his most understated, the better to foreground the excellent, intriguingly layered performance from Hélène Vincent.

She plays Michelle, a chic grandmother who has retired to a village in rural Burgundy near her best friend, Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko). It’s a blissful, bucolic life until an estrangement from her hostile daughter (Ludivine Sagnier) robs Michelle of the one thing she looks forward to most: contact with her grandson. A friendship with Marie-Claude’s ex-con adult son Vincent (Pierre Lottin) brings new purpose to her life, but is the relationship all it seems? For that matter, is Michelle?

In UK and Irish cinemas