AllMovie

A man universally renowned for his directorial artistry, French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin (La Sentinelle, Kings & Queen) investigates the life story of a little-known ancestor with L'Aimee. The film offers rare insights into Desplechin's familial background by following him on a deeply personal journey to his childhood home of Roubaix, a short time before the house is finally sold to an outside buyer. Once there, the filmmaker and his father Robert begin to investigate the life of Arnaud's paternal grandmother via a wealth of priceless and irreplaceable familial artifacts. The grandmother, Thérèse Desplechin, died of tuberculosis at age 36, merely two years after giving birth to Robert; consequently, Robert knows precious little about his mother aside from what he has been told. Arnaud and Robert thus team up to stitch together a loosely-knit onscreen biographical portrait of the enigmatic woman, drawing from such resources as a painting of Thérèse, pages from an old diary, personal letters and vintage photographs. Meanwhile, Desplechin's camera observes the house itself being prepped for sale, as the rooms are emptied one-by-one. The film thus meditates on the loss wrought by the death of a family member, and the changes that can unfold in a clan over the bittersweet passage of time.