Queen at Sea ends on the sort of abrupt note that demands consideration of why what we’ve just seen is significant enough to merit climaxing the entire movie on. 

The final sequence with the old folks totally tracks as finale worthy…but why cut it against the teen’s devirgination? 

For much of this new movie, these dual narratives play like a circle-of-life juxtaposition between young love and geriatric romance, birth and death existing side by side simultaneously. And while these same themes undergird the conclusion, its back-and-forth editing seems to suggest how the girl may connect these two events in her future. 

Will she blame herself for not being there? For your first sexual experience (if not first love) to be tied up with such guilt? Even if Juliette Binoche’s mother character tries to convince her that her step-grandfather had explicitly signed up for such a fatal risk, she could still hold herself responsible for depriving them of even more time together. 

More problems might be through her windshield than in her rearview; the ending of one story — Queen at Sea’s — can be the start of the next.