At dawn one morning, Clarisse gets dressed and gathers her things, being careful not to wake her husband, Marc, or either of her children, Paul and Lucie.

Clarisse stops by a gas station to see a friend, who fixes up her car and asks if she is running away, vaguely referencing an event from two months prior.

Clarisse arrives at the beach and gets drunk at a bar, and tries to imagine with fellow patrons how Marc will explain things to the kids.

She unbuttons his shirt in the middle of the lounge, but simply rests her hand on his chest to feel his heartbeat before leaving.

The scene at the ski resort is replayed, except this time, the dog barking heralds the return of the search and rescue crew, carrying the bodies of Marc, Lucie and Paul.

According to director Mathieu Amalric, the film was shot in segments months apart in order to capture multiple seasons, ending in February 2020.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Hold Me Tight trips over style while reaching for substance; fortunately, it has Vicky Krieps' stellar performance to keep it from falling down.

[6] Critic Michael O'Sullivan praised the film's depiction of grief in a 3 out of 4 star review for The Washington Post, describing it as a "strange and compelling film, a study of grief that somehow is at once moving and detached, in the way that people in mourning sometimes engage in denial-like displacement activities: behavior that's inappropriate to the emotion at hand.

Her general state of dazed detachment gives weight to one particularly explosive outburst of anger and pain toward the film's end, devastating in its cathartic confrontation with reality.