Near Montpellier, Victor, 13, watches his mother battle cancer. When she announces she’s taking him to her parents, far from the town he’s grown up in, he decides to go in search of the father he never knew. Victor finds him at the opera house in Montpellier, where he works as the orchestra director. Although his father at first doesn’t want anything to do with Victor, the man slowly comes closer to his son...

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Fours years after her debut with Angel and Tony, Alix Delaporte is reunited with Grégory Gadebois and Clothilde Hesme, her favorite actress. The reunion is mirrored in the vague banality that flows through this ordinary story: a broken home, illness, summer love, two worlds colliding, a postcard view of French society filmed soberly as expected – that becomes increasingly annoying. Only Romain Paul, who moves through the silence with a mix of sweetness and contained violence, makes The Last Hammer Blow somewhat interesting. There are no real false notes but the melody is just not really remarkable.