My Favorite Season

Émilie and Antoine have been estranged for three years because they quarreled at their father's funeral. The argument was serious enough to sever their communication entirely, and it took their mother Berthe's declining health and Émilie's invitation for Christmas dinner to force a reconciliation between the siblings.

Berthe feels completely out of place in her daughter Émilie's bourgeois home in Blagnac. She finds the house pretentious, dislikes Bruno, has no affection for the grandchildren, and does not appreciate Émilie's efforts to make her comfortable. Her resistance stems from being uprooted from the French farmhouse where she spent most of her life, combined with her independent spirit and bitterness about her children's success keeping them too busy to care for her.

The nighttime pool scene early in the film establishes Berthe's isolation and dissatisfaction before the Christmas confrontation.

The fight between Bruno and Antoine erupts after the younger family members leave the dinner table. The confrontation is fueled by long-simmering tensions regarding Berthe's care and the class differences between Bruno's bourgeois world and Antoine's more straightforward personality. The argument becomes physical, with Antoine leaving with a bloody nose, and Berthe choosing to leave with him rather than stay in Émilie's household.

The tension between the two men has been building throughout the evening, foreshadowed by Bruno's earlier objections to Berthe's presence and Antoine's wariness about the visit.

After a heated argument with Émilie where they recriminate each other about their behavior toward their mother, Antoine feels overwhelming guilt. He makes a halfhearted suicide attempt by jumping from the balcony of his apartment, which results in him breaking a leg rather than dying. The attempt reflects his emotional crisis over his mother's decline and his own perceived failures as a son and brother, rather than a genuine desire to die.

Throughout the film, Antoine struggles with guilt about his estrangement from his mother and sister, and his failed attempts to reconnect with Émilie foreshadow his emotional breakdown.

The title refers to a question asked by Anne at the end of the film during breakfast with the family after Berthe's funeral. Anne asks everyone which is their favorite season since she does not have one. The question, asked at this pivotal moment of loss and tentative reconciliation, reflects the film's meditation on time, memory, and the cycles of family life. Émilie then recites a childhood poem about waiting for holidays to be reunited with Antoine, connecting the title to themes of anticipation, childhood innocence, and the passing of seasons.

When Berthe's physical and mental health have severely deteriorated at the retirement home, she tells her children she wishes she had had a third child because that child would have taken care of her. This bitter remark reflects her feelings of abandonment by her two successful but busy children, who placed her in a nursing home rather than caring for her themselves. It underscores the film's exploration of filial duty and the irony that professional success has made her children unable or unwilling to care for their aging mother.

Earlier in the film, Berthe critiques her children's careers and how their busy professional lives have kept them from being present for her.

Before Antoine's departure at the film's end, Émilie recites a poem she learned as a song when she was a child. She used to sing it while waiting at school for the holidays to be reunited with her brother Antoine. This moment symbolizes the lost innocence of their childhood bond and the hope that the family might reclaim some of that closeness, as evidenced by the siblings singing together during the drive to the nursing home earlier in the film.

The drive to the nursing home where Émilie and Antoine sing together as they did as children directly foreshadows this final poetic recitation.

Anne, who was studying law at the beginning of the film, has given up her law studies by the time the family gathers at the bar. She now works in a music shop instead. The film suggests she, like the older generation, is searching for meaning beyond the professional and bourgeois path her parents expected. Her change of direction reflects the film's theme of questioning success and personal fulfillment versus family expectations.

Lucien, the adopted son of Émilie and Bruno, works at a nightclub in town and has a rocky relationship with Khadija, the family's Moroccan secretary. The two were discovered making out on Christmas Eve, and by the later bar scene, their relationship is described as unstable. Their romance represents one of the few subplots involving the younger generation and contrasts with the older generation's fractured relationships.

After the Christmas dinner fight and her departure with Antoine, Berthe returns to live alone at her farm. However, she soon suffers a stroke, which forces the family to reconsider her care arrangements. Her return to the farm represents one final attempt to maintain independence and autonomy, but her declining health makes this impossible, leading to the decision to place her in a nursing home.

Berthe's strong dissatisfaction with Émilie's home and her repeated complaints about living there foreshadow her decision to return to the farm.

Émilie separates from Bruno sometime after Berthe's stroke and the family crisis. When Émilie visits Antoine to discuss their mother's care, she reveals that she has separated from Bruno. The separation seems to stem from the deterioration of their family life, with Émilie telling Bruno on Christmas Eve that she loathes what they have become. The strain of dealing with Berthe's situation and the family conflicts appears to have finalized the end of their marriage.

Émilie's confession to Bruno on Christmas night that she despises what their family has become directly foreshadows their eventual separation.

When Émilie spends the night at Antoine's apartment under pressure from her brother, Antoine gives her a drug to help her sleep. This gesture, while seemingly caring, also allows Antoine to leave and join Khadija and Anne at the bar where Lucien works. The act highlights the complicated nature of sibling relationships at this point in the film, they are trying to reconnect but still have trust issues and separate agendas.