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REVIEWED - TIME TO LEAVE/LE TEMPS QUI RESTE: ONLY Michael Winterbottom and Woody Allen come close to challenging François Ozon's status as the most prolific director working today. Now 38, Ozon recently finished shooting his 10th feature in nine years, Angel, his English-language debut, and he has a new half-hour short at Cannes next week.

Even more remarkable is the consistency of Ozon's work as he moves with apparent effortlessness between themes and genres.

Time to Leave, shown at Cannes a year ago, is the second film in his projected trilogy dealing with death and mourning, which began with Under the Sand (2000), in which a woman (Charlotte Rampling) is deep in denial after the disappearance of her husband. In Time to Leave, an early scene confronts the protagonist, Romain, with his own mortality when his doctor informs him he has terminal cancer.

Romain is just 31, a gay, successful fashion photographer. As portrayed in Melvil Poupaud's admirably committed performance, he is an arrogant, temperamental, cocaine-snorting young man whose perspective on life is inevitably changed by the awareness of his imminent death.

References to future events mean nothing to Romain because he knows he won't be around for them. Memories of his childhood prompt him to reflect on how he changed as an adult. "I'm not a nice person," he acknowledges to a friendly waitress (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi from Ozon's 5X2).

How Romain chooses to respond to his fate reflects his unwavering self-absorption, keeping the information secret from some of his family even though he is well aware that preparing them for what lies ahead would be more compassionate. This is Romain's life, and he will live it to the end according to his own terms.

Throwing out the Hollywood melodrama rulebook, Ozon firmly sidesteps the obvious sentimental pitfalls of the scenario, depicting Romain's many unappealing characteristics so unflinchingly that he keeps the viewer's sympathy at bay. Nor does his inventively devised movie follow any predictable plotline, despite the inevitability of where it will end.

There are several memorable digressions along this path, the most affecting of them a beautifully tender scene where Romain visits his grandmother (the incomparable Jeanne Moreau). Ozon's thoughtful, mature and commendably honest film eschews dramatic compromise as it builds to an imaginative resolution that is profoundly moving and - most unexpectedly - life-affirming.