On My Way

On My Way (Elle s'en va, 2013) is a French tragicomedy from Emmanuelle Bercot, starring Catherine Deneuve, that you can watch online on iFILM. In a single afternoon, everything caves in on Bettie, who runs a small restaurant: her lover walks out and her business slides to the edge of bankruptcy.

In the middle of the lunch rush, she quietly steps away — supposedly to grab cigarettes at a nearby bar. She doesn't come back. An aging Mercedes, half-empty roads, chance passengers and gas stations turn into a weeklong drift across France. Along the way she has to collect a grandson she barely knows and stop in at a reunion of former beauty queens — decades ago, Bettie was crowned Miss Brittany. Deneuve plays it stripped bare: weariness, stubbornness, sudden flashes of tenderness.

Bercot makes the kind of road movie where the route matters more than the destination, and the laughs keep brushing up against something sad. The film opened the Berlinale and rests almost entirely on its lead. If you like slow European dramas about finding a second wind, this one's for you. Stream On My Way (2013) online on iFILM.