Michelle (Hélène Vincent) looks like the ideal granny, with perfect white hair, porcelain doll looks and the sweetest smile permanently printed in her face. The type you’d put on a marmalade advert. She lives in a beautiful countryside house in leafy Burgundy. She loves cooking and making cake for her daughter Valerie (Ludivine Sagnier) and 10-year-old son Lucas, her only grandchild. She gingerly picks wild mushrooms for a brief family reunion. Michelle’s good intentions backfire horribly after a toxic ingredient sends Valerie straight to hospital. The young woman is convinced that her mother tried to kill her. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg,

A very bitter and permanently disgruntled Valerie returns to Paris without pressing charges, however determined not to allow granny to see her beloved grandson ever again. Michelle’s best fried Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), with whom she shares a “dirty” past and one or two dirty secrets, offers the sad old lady solace. Michelle directs her family love and altruism towards Marie-Claude’s son Vincent (Pierre Lottin). The young man has just left prison, and he is looking for ways to settle into society. Michelle offers him a decently-paid gardening job. She soon goes even further. She lends him a large sum of money to open a bar, after becoming impressed by his work ethics. This is a woman desperately seeking to build family ties with the younger generation, after being denied such possibility by her only offspring.

Parallel to this, Valerie grapples with an acrimonious divorce. Lucas’s father Laurent lives in Dubai and wishes to take the child with him to the Middle East. Valerie and Michelle blame each other for the failed marriage. Profound resentment prevents the two from reconnecting for more reasons than one, leaving Michelle to rely on her proxy family in Burgundy instead. The problem is Vincent becomes so empathetic of his newfound protector that he decides to step forward and seek a very clumsy resolution. An open-ended development sends the story in a new direction, sealing everyone’s destiny,. Vincent’s reckless actions may have repercussions for every single character.

The familiar topics of family dysfunctional, generation gap, terminal disease, death, grief and a “dishonourable” lifestyle are all present, ingredients familiar to anyone acquainted with the 56-year-old French director’s extensive filmography. Just like a tiny countryside road, this is a movie with countless twists and turns. This includes a couple of bizarre and poorly elucidated developments, which threaten to throw the story off track. This is as close as it gets to a melodrama without resorting to grandiose music and hammy acting. Ozon seeks to keep his characters with their feet firmly on the ground, despite their constant desire to fly off capriciously. An entirely redundant prologue prevents the story from reaching the intended emotional heights, instead diluting it with repetitive flavours.

When Fall is Coming was in the Official Competition of the 72nd San Sebastian International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. The UK premiere takes place in October, as part of the BFI London Film Festival.