Nice story telling. The striking thing about this movie for me was the superb acting by Sandrine Kiberlain, who plays the doctor-mom, Marianne. The story is well written, and I can see why some of the reviewers seem to find fault with it, eg., "why did she invite her son's bully to stay with them ?"...but the way the story flows, it does not seem unbelievable. Some of the human elements are fantastic: when Thomas finds out his step-mother is pregnant, he tells Marianne that at last she will have a real child - to which she replies 'there are no fake children'. The delivery of dialogue here is fantastic. Same, when she finds out, finally, why the 2 boys have been fighting - her dialogue delivery and demeanor are superlative. The military funeral is done well too. The scenery has been used to good effect. The scenes of snow falling, driving in the snow, and of the isolated lakes where the boys go swimming in the nude in the middle of winter all add to the sense of isolation that Thomas has been used to living in.
