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“Whether you love or hate him, you’ve only got one father. So it’s better to love or hate him while he’s alive because afterwards it’s too late.”
Léo has tried everything to get David and Max, his oldest sons, to make up. He even invited them to his 70th birthday without letting either of them know that the other would be there. But what a disaster that turned out to be! He’s given up.
Léo was a traveling salesman, often on the road. He believes that he’d raised his three sons to respect family values and feels unjustly rewarded for his efforts. And God knows just how hard it was to raise them alone after his wife’s death. Is he being selfish? Is it too much to ask for a little affection and even some gratitude from his children? Obviously, if their behaviour is anything to go by. He more or less has to make an appointment to see David for more than three minutes. Okay, being a CEO is a taxing job, but not every boss avoids his family to this degree. And Max, he’s been unemployed since resigning from his job and now has time on his hands. He could visit, but instead devotes himself to his wife – and to his depression. As for Simon, the eternal teenager, well even before all of this he already lived on another planet.
Léo no longer knows what to do to bring his family together again. Then fate lends a hand. Léo falls ill, just a minor illness, and not at all surprising when you’re 70 years old. His brother, a doctor, hospitalizes him and his children pay him visits. They come separately, of course, but still, they do come along. It’s actually quite good being ill. Now Léo knows what he must do. He pretends he has to undergo a delicate operation in three weeks time, leaving him enough time to take his children on a trip so as to be together with them, perhaps for the last time.
What child could say no to a father who has little time left and who only asks for a peaceful week together? None! So, they all head for Canada.

With: Philippe Noiret, Charles Berling, Pascal Elbé, Bruno Putzulu, Marie Tifo, Geneviève Brouillette, Pierre Lebeau, Jacques Boudet, Pascale Coulombe, Gilles Cloutier, Gilles Moisan, Stéphane Jacques, Catherine Leclerc, Maude Payette, Arnaud Denis, Eva Saint-Paul.

Trailer for the movie Père et fils: