Declaration of War

Both in front of and behind the camera, director Valérie Donzelli and her co-writer, Jérémie Elkaïm, are the parents of a son with cancer. It’s almost a disservice to call this art imitating life, but perhaps it provided some much-needed therapy for the entire family. In the film, they play Juliette and—naturally—Romeo, which would be a bit of an albatross if the tale wasn’t so gripping, so human, and so humanely portrayed. Some viewers may latch on to those names as too convenient, and some of the film’s other elements could be considered hammy for the sake of added drama, but there’s no denying the hearts-on-their-sleeves approach of Donzelli and Elkaïm’s sad but touching achievement.