Meurtres en Temps et en Heure

Simon Marchand, once a famous lawyer, has fallen from grace. He is asked to defend a woman accused of infanticide. She ended the suffering of her severely disabled daughter. He does not try to shift her responsibility, but throws himself heart and soul into her defense.

As he approaches sixty, the time has come for Pierre Leprieur to take stock of his life. What did he accomplish and what did he mess up during his life? He was formerly an influential trade unionist on the docks at Le Havre. The passing years saw his relationship with his wife and his now-adult children subside. One evening, with his whole family gathered together to celebrate his birthday, the party is ruined. His sons, Jean and Simon, find themselves accused of mass drug trafficking. Whilst their sister, Emma, a criminal lawyer, tries to get them out of this difficult situation, Pierre, who si convinced that he is being targeted, does his utmost to help them. Yet he knows that if he roots around too much, he could end up unearthing truths best left untold.

The film centers on a young French widow and her two adolescent children as they attempt to carve out a meager life for themselves by farming rice fields alongside the ocean in French Indo-China in the 1930s. Their efforts are hampered each year by the presence of the sea, which invariably floods the fields with saltwater and wipes out the crops. In desperation, the mother realizes that their only hope lies in the construction of a sea wall to prevent continued flooding, but the mother must cut a swath through the local bureaucracy in an almost Sisyphean attempt to make this happen. Meanwhile, her obstinate daughter, Suzanne, draws the romantic obsessions of a well-to-do Chinese gentleman, Monsieur Jo. Though he could easily provide a way out, the possibility of a romantic relationship between Jo and Suzanne could just as easily fall prey to local racial prejudices that would damage or ruin the lives of both.