Binoche's Antigone is single-minded, relentless, almost fixated by the idea of death: my only qualm about a performance that avoids the easy path of pathos is that it descends into shrillness at moments of extreme passion.
With her longtime musical director, Wally Harper, on piano (his playing is sparer and more focused than in the past), and the bassist Richard Sarpola, the intermissionless, 90-minute performance maintains an easy balance between pathos and playfulness.
Failure is preordained, and "When We Leave" walks a delicate boundary between tragedy and a flimsier, easier form of pathos.
But once you get past admiring the cast's tech-savvy ability to perform for the cameras as well as for the audience, the combination of easy targets and unearned pathos make the show's elements considerably more fun to list than they are to watch.
This week's runner-up had a magical mix of pathos, realism, easy puns, and nephrology: it was @christamar10's uncomfortably good "Harry bent over the toilet, his face contorted in pain; it seemed he would never pass the sorcerer's kidney stone".
Everyone makes jokes about the self-absorbed hypocrises of Islington liberalism; only this writer has the wit and the stringency to take on this easy comedy and draw compelling, even universal pathos from it.
Steve Coogan, who produced, wrote and starred in the film, said: " Philomena has been a labour of love, to make a film with the very best people, where comedy and pathos sit side by side is not easy.
To make a film with the very best people, where comedy and pathos sit side by side is not easy.
Most people start out in ruins, though: these tend to be the easiest sites to access, and the aesthetic payoffs – the pathos of abandonment, the material residue of inscrutable histories – are rapid.
