What do you do when you're a has-been musician with thinning hair, staring at middle age and years of loneliness ahead? The good news — at least for Maxime (Vincent Macaigne) in "Tonnerre" — is that you've got a kind old dad (Bernard Menez), a dog and a rambling house in the titular French city, surrounded by snowy mountains.
Described by many in his native France as the Gallic Woody Allen, filmmaker Guillaume Brac tells an oft-told tale: Being single sucks, but being old and single is an incomparable bummer.
"Actually, right before making this movie, I was in a state very much like Maxime's," Brac tells The Japan Times. "I thought I would never find love again, and working on this film accelerated the down-in-the-dumps feeling."