Bon Voyage, Marie - Film Review - Fremantle Shipping News

Gayle O’Leary reviews Alliance Française French Film Festival 2026 entry (Bon Voyage, Marie or “On Ira”) directed by Enya Baroux, starring Pierre Lottin, David Ayala, and winnerAlpe d’Huez International Comedy Film 2025 – Best Actress Awards for Hélène Vincent and Juliette Gasquet. Gayle adored it!

Marie has decided to die.

At the age of 80, a terminal diagnosis presents her with the option of enduring yet more treatment, or leaving with dignity through assisted dying.

Getting from France to Switzerland isn’t so easy, however. Marie’s son and granddaughter have no idea. She refuses to tell them. But she can’t travel alone.

Maria entices her mildly useless, destitute son to chase after a “surprise inheritance” waiting for them in Switzerland. Neither of them want to drive. And her fierce granddaughter eagerly insists on joining them in the campervan. A little too young to drive, though.

Enter Rudy. After being caught squatting in the spare room of one of his at-home senior care patients, Ruby’s employment looks tenuous at best and his accommodation even more so. Marie decides to blackmail Rudy into driving them all.

What could go wrong?

A trip that we could make roughly in the same time it takes to get from Mandurah to Geraldton is elongated over days and peppered with fun little disasters while Marie savours the company. Expect Monopoly feuds, blood, sweat, and tears, fireworks, and gypsies. Muhammad Ali even gets to throw in a few punches.

Director, Enya Baroux, revealed during an interview that this film is close to her heart as a visualisation of the final journey she might have wished for her own grandmother. Financing the film from the original screenplay took seven years of persistence, and cruelly left only a handful of days to actually film it.

We laughed plenty at the ridiculous escapades of the characters, from silicon implants trapped below faulty chairlifts to pampered rats to pilfered bowling shoes to awkward parental puberty advice to the “Senior Care Superman” dedication of Rudy where he sails over a wall to the rescue.

Many of the beautiful scenes, framed and softly lit, feel like family snaps in a photo album. It is wistful, the end of the journey hangs as a cloud above all proceedings the entire time, but the natural comic ease between the characters lifts the mood effortlessly.