My Favourite Season
| My Favorite Season | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | André Téchiné |
| Produced by | Alain Sarde |
| Written by |
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| Starring | |
| Music by | Philippe Sarde |
| Cinematography | Thierry Arbogast |
| Edited by | Martine Giordano |
| Distributed by | AMLF |
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Release date
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Running time
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127 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Budget | €6.9 million |
| Box office | $11 million |
My Favorite Season (French: Ma saison préférée) is a 1993 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, co-written by Téchiné and Pascal Bonitzer, and starring Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Auteuil, and Marthe Villalonga. The story concerns two middle age siblings, a brother and sister, who resume their fragile relationship when they are forced to care for their ailing mother. It won the award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1996 Boston Society of Film Critics Awards.
Berthe, an elderly widow, is forced by her declining health to close the French farmhouse where she has spent much of her life. She moves in with her daughter Émilie and son in law Bruno who share a legal practice and have two grown up children: Anne, a law university student, and Lucien, who was adopted. In spite of Émilie’s efforts, Berthe is not happy in her daughter’s bourgeois home in Blagnac. She sits by the swimming pool in the middle of the night talking to herself and finds the house pretentious. Worried about her mother's physical and mental health, Émilie pays a visit to her unmarried younger brother, Antoine, a neurosurgeon. They have not seen each other for three years, since they quarreled at their father’s funeral. Émilie informs Antoine of their mother's condition and invites him to a Christmas dinner with the entire family.
On Christmas Eve, Antoine arrives at his sister's home when Émilie, Bruno and their daughter are leaving for midnight mass. The neurotic Antoine has to remind himself not to be carried away and spoil the evening. As he wanders though the house looking for his mother, Antoine surprises his nephew Lucien, who works at a night club in town, making out with Khadija, Émilie and Bruno’s uninhibited Moroccan secretary who has been invited to spend Christmas with the family. Antoine promises not to tell anything. When he finds his mother's room, Berthe is delighted to see her son, but complains about living with her daughter. She dislikes Bruno, has no affection for the grandchildren and does not value her daughter’s efforts to make her feel at ease. Dinner is lively, but after the youngsters leave for Lucien’s room, tempers flares between Bruno and Antoine and they end up in a fist fight. Bruno becomes angry; Antoine leaves with a bleeding nose and Berthe departs with her son. Talking later with Bruno, Émilie loathes what they have become. Anne is distraught with the family's dispute and looks to Khadija for solace.
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