Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
A boy and his eccentric parents leave their home in Paris for a country house in Spain. As the mother descends deeper into her own mind, it's up to the boy and his father to keep her safe and happy.
Waiting for Bojangles is a lyrical French film carried above all by its performances — Virginie Efira is luminous and heartbreaking as the mercurial, mentally fragile mother, and Romain Duris matches her with warmth and devotion. The film's greatest strength is its emotional authenticity in depicting both the joy and the devastation of loving someone whose mind is slipping away. The plot, while affecting, follows a fairly predictable arc of romantic idealism crashing against psychiatric reality, and the ending, though earned, lands with a bittersweet inevitability rather than surprise. Cinematography is handsome but not visually adventurous. Novelty is modest — the tone blending whimsy with grief echoes films like The Intouchables or A Monster Calls, and the narrative itself is fairly conventional French romantic drama dressed in poetic melancholy.