Ne Me Quitte Pas suggests that without pain there is no pleasure

Ne Me Quitte Pas. Picture: DocPoint

Bob and Marcel have problems …but they also have each other.

In ‘Ne Me Quitte Pas’ (2013) we see this two-man support team rolling aimlessly through the days following Marcel’s breakup with his wife as the two of them attempt to answer the surreal question of “how it’s all going to end.”

Following an almost instant separation, we join Bob and Marcel as they spend their days avoiding sobriety and ridiculously hatching plans to address their own issues.

Marcel suggests from time to time that change is possible and for the sake of his relationship with his children, necessary.

Bob appears content to mockingly smile with his rum and lightly joke about the two men’s existence, suggesting that without pain they would not know pleasure.

Alcohol takes control

While humorous in parts, the film is filled with enough sad imagery to suggest darker days are coming.

At the end of the 2nd Chapter, we see Marcel with two of his three children, sitting in the corner of a room, at a costume party, starring vacantly into the crowd.

His emotions, or lack thereof, confirm that his relationship with alcohol is one that is well beyond his own control.

The children endure the moment with an equally empty look as if eye contact would be an awful admission of the truth. Bob on the other hand, measures his remaining days by the number of teeth that he still has. As they are slowly removed by the local dentist, we start to see how invasive Bob’s poor health really is.

The two men’s schedule is briefly interrupted when Marcel admits himself to an alcohol rehabilitation center in a nearby town where he makes several friends and discovers that his memory is no longer working properly.

But will Marcel find clarity and leave the old routines behind him?

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