Babenco: Tell Me When I Die

There is almost nothing in the way of laments, regrets, tearful sadness or judgments. On balance, the man we see in the film is handling his predicament with unembarrassed honesty and directness.

As a two-way study of love and art shared between spouses with little time left, "Tell Me When I Die" is elegant and affecting, with even its most enigmatic flourishes and asides telling us something of the relationship at hand.

Though there's unquestionable dissonance between the dying veteran filmmaker and his much younger pupil, their roles aren't so fixed.

Artifice, reality and dreams blur and overlap, without quite managing to find satisfactory focus or narrative momentum.