More Than Ever

Helénè (Vicky Krieps) is ill - very ill. Little by little, her lung tissue is scarring. At some point in the near future, the 33-year-old will no longer be able to breathe. Her previous life of light-heartedness, with her clique in Bordeaux, who, out of pity, encouragement and bias, no longer know what to do, and at the side of her loving partner Mathieu (Gaspard Ulliel), only feels like being under a glass bell. “The living don't understand the dying.” This is what the Norwegian Bent (Bjørn Floberg) once says to Heléne. The terminally ill French woman came across the much older blogger, who writes quietly sarcastically about his life with a fatal tumor, on the Internet. Instead of undergoing a grueling lung transplant, Helénè travels to Norway by train - without Mathieu - and moves into Bent's white house by the dark blue fjord. Helénè leaves her former life behind... and draws new strength in simplicity and solitude. “More than Ever” is an intense and touching film about love and life, about saying goodbye and letting go. Director Emily Atef (“3 Days in Quiberon”) vividly shows how a couple can reinvent themselves and survive the greatest of all trials. Gaspard Ulliel (“Saint Laurent”) can be seen in front of the camera alongside Vicky Krieps in his last role. “When Hélène jumps into the ice-cold water in the morning, she doesn't seem a bit lonely in the almost deserted surroundings. You don't really want to mention that this heroine is terminally ill. Because Emily Atef's film is about life. About a young woman who finds her vitality again because she faces up to her finiteness. [...] Vicky Krieps plays Hélène floating, searching, with her typical mixture of permeability and determination. The actress was recently seen in Marie Kreutzer's film Corsage in the role of the Austrian Empress Sisi, a monarch who refuses to be represented. Mehr denn je is also about a refusal. Hélène does not want to conform to the roles expected of her. [...] Hélène wants: to be there. She wants to live in the present, which gives her the time she has left.” (Katja Nicodemus, in: Die Zeit)