Question: Incest?

There's a discussion about brothers and sisters, but it's a particular character's way of alienating people with inappropriate subject matter. So, no within the family there isn't an incestuous relationship.

Nothing is said or even strongly implied, but I thought at one point that at the end of the movie it was going to be revealed that the oldest daughter’s teenage son had been fathered by the middle brother. That would explain why she hated him so much as to demand his banishment from the family and also why those two (the middle son and the teenage grandson) had the same blood compatibility with the Catherine Deneuve character.


Don't give me songs
Give me something to sing about

Yes, you have hit on the hidden clue that makes some sense out of this enigmatic picture. Paull and Henri have closely matching HLA (human leukocyte antigen) patterns and this makes it probable that they are more closely related than uncle and nephew, considering the DNA contribution from Elizabeth's husband. What's more, Elizabeth's strong antipathy to Henri is too potent for it to be merely due to her dislike for his sociopathic tendencies and irresponsibility. She claims not to understand it and has a mysterious depression. This is quite typical of children who have suffered childhood sexual abuse or trauma.

Henri's mother's antipathy to him is more straightforward. He was admittedly conceived not as a loving son but as bone marrow donor for Joseph, and failed this crucial test. His mother's rejection of him may well explain his personality.

So poor, misunderstood, cosmically angry and self-destructive Henri is ruined by the ghost of his dead brother, and Paull is Henri's son.

I was annoyed, though, by the clumsy way in which Simon was introduced, and the lack of explanation of how he came to be deciding the fate of Sylvia's marriage to Ivan, and the introduction of Spatafora and Rosaimee with no apparent connection to the rest of the story, other than as bringers of important information.