Three years after winning top honors in Un Certain Regard with ‘After Lucia,’ Michel Franco graduates to the official competition with this English-language debut, starring Tim Roth as a nurse specializing in terminally ill homecare.
Any comment on the total commitment of Tim Roth’s performance as a palliative care worker in Chronic seems inadequate to describe the intense degree to which the actor loses himself in the punishing life of a man whose dedication to his job stems directly from the scars of personal devastation. To describe this first English-language feature from Michel Franco as bleak is a similar understatement. While it’s tough to figure what audience exists beyond festivals for this uncompromising study in grief, pain, terminal care and dying, admiration for the Mexican writer-director’s formal rigor in the service of hard-hitting material is a given.
