Time to Leave (2005) on Netflix

A fashion photographer with terminal cancer elects to die alone, preparing others to live past him rather than prolong the inevitable with chemotherapy or be smothered in sympathy by those who know him.

Romain, 31, a photographer, learns that a malignancy may kill him within a few months. Decisions: Treatment? Work? How to tell his lover and his family. He remembers the sea and himself as a child. He stares in the mirror. He's cruel: facing death, he pushes people away - what's the point? He visits his grandmother to tell her; on the way, he chats briefly with a waitress. He looks at old photos, visits a childhood tree house. He takes pictures. Returning from his grandmother's, he stops for food and sees the waitress, Jany, again. She makes a request. He returns to an empty flat - his lover has left. Can Jany's proposition give him a way to move past self-pity?

—<jhailey@hotmail.com>