You couldn’t ordinarily term a movie beautiful where just two of the scenes contain an infirm body swathed in bandages being thrown from a hospital room window or a decapitated head sinking to the bottom of a swimming pool.

Auteur and darling of the indie set Richard Linklater returns with a very small and simple movie that adds up to far greater than the sum of its parts. In what can only be described as a character study, every Hollywood convention is jettisoned.

What follows is a year of healing and loving amongst real people as they try to make sense of the short time they have. Natalie and Ross’s marriage isn’t really tested by the healing as much as the same stuff they’ve always faced — the threat of retrenchment, the influence of new and old friends and looking after their kids and getting by without going insane.