My Afternoons With Margueritte (La Tete en Friche) reviews
Review by on 26 Sep 2010
With a graceful tone to match his previous body of work, director Jean Becker unveils a charming and serene film that explores an indispensable relationship between two unlikely French citizens.
Gérard Depardieu stars as Germain, an unprivileged, illiterate handyman who spends his days defacing public monuments and counting pigeons in the park, where he regularly meets ninety-five year old Margueritte (Gisèle Casadesus). The two spend their sporadic liaisons reciting French literature and swapping stories from their diverse pasts, all the while recognising a mutual appreciation for one another.
Theirs is a relationship built upon classic foundations; she is wise and optimistic whereas he is oafish and negative, suffering from a cruel lifelong oppression at the hands of his increasingly senile mother, a plot element I felt could have been explored further despite the amusing flashbacks. Acting as an accessible maternal figure, Casadesus brings a fragile tenderness to her role, filling the screen with an uplifting likeability that I couldn’t help but warm to. She and Depardieu share a tender chemistry and bounce off each other with pleasant aplomb.
This film is a triumph in many ways. Imitating a few elements from DRIVING MISS DAISY and sidestepping creepy undertones found in films like HAROLD & MAUDE, Becker adapts a tender, melancholic story that ends on a feel good high. Unspoilt by the heart-warming affection between the two protagonists and benefiting from a transient theme, the film features an amicable geriatric relationship, which is refreshing given its rarity in modern day cinema.
Edward Frost
Gérard Depardieu stars as Germain, an unprivileged, illiterate handyman who spends his days defacing public monuments and counting pigeons in the park, where he regularly meets ninety-five year old Margueritte (Gisèle Casadesus). The two spend their sporadic liaisons reciting French literature and swapping stories from their diverse pasts, all the while recognising a mutual appreciation for one another.
Theirs is a relationship built upon classic foundations; she is wise and optimistic whereas he is oafish and negative, suffering from a cruel lifelong oppression at the hands of his increasingly senile mother, a plot element I felt could have been explored further despite the amusing flashbacks. Acting as an accessible maternal figure, Casadesus brings a fragile tenderness to her role, filling the screen with an uplifting likeability that I couldn’t help but warm to. She and Depardieu share a tender chemistry and bounce off each other with pleasant aplomb.
This film is a triumph in many ways. Imitating a few elements from DRIVING MISS DAISY and sidestepping creepy undertones found in films like HAROLD & MAUDE, Becker adapts a tender, melancholic story that ends on a feel good high. Unspoilt by the heart-warming affection between the two protagonists and benefiting from a transient theme, the film features an amicable geriatric relationship, which is refreshing given its rarity in modern day cinema.
Edward Frost
Review by on 23 Sep 2010
To read synopses of this film is not nearly to do it justice. How sentimental it seems from reading : “an elderly lady and an illiterate form an unexpected friendship.” As, usuall, when the term “unexpected” is used, the outcome is the opposite. However, the unexpected is exactly what director Jean Becker delivers.
Based on the novel of the same name (“la Tête en Friche“, or “the Fallow Head”, the book is currently unavailable as an English translation) Jean-Loup Dabadie and Jean Becker stayed as close to the book as possible and have ultimately created something beautiful. For a certificate 15 film, MY AFTERNOONS WITH MARGUERITTE is surprisingly delicate, whether this is a reflection on Margueritte’s character is subject to opinion, or how pretentious you feel. The audience is never made to feel uncomfortable by what they‘re seeing. It‘s easy to watch and enjoy.
Nothing in this film seems unnecessary. Although you find yourself leaping back through time to explore Germain Chazes past, the whole story fits together seamlessly. From the opening scene you are charmed, watching Gérard Depardieu as Germain plodding along the street in his dusty overalls, counting money on his fingers. There is something raw about the characters that creates a resonating image that leave you feeling as if You were right there, sat on a park bench counting pigeons.
To use a worn out phrase, it will make you laugh and cry. It’s a pleasure to see such an optimistic film that doesn’t stray from reality.
Claire Alexander
Based on the novel of the same name (“la Tête en Friche“, or “the Fallow Head”, the book is currently unavailable as an English translation) Jean-Loup Dabadie and Jean Becker stayed as close to the book as possible and have ultimately created something beautiful. For a certificate 15 film, MY AFTERNOONS WITH MARGUERITTE is surprisingly delicate, whether this is a reflection on Margueritte’s character is subject to opinion, or how pretentious you feel. The audience is never made to feel uncomfortable by what they‘re seeing. It‘s easy to watch and enjoy.
Nothing in this film seems unnecessary. Although you find yourself leaping back through time to explore Germain Chazes past, the whole story fits together seamlessly. From the opening scene you are charmed, watching Gérard Depardieu as Germain plodding along the street in his dusty overalls, counting money on his fingers. There is something raw about the characters that creates a resonating image that leave you feeling as if You were right there, sat on a park bench counting pigeons.
To use a worn out phrase, it will make you laugh and cry. It’s a pleasure to see such an optimistic film that doesn’t stray from reality.
Claire Alexander
Review by on 22 Sep 2010
Warm and subtle film about finding value in the apparently worthless: a child who is treated like the dirt beneath his mother's feet makes the dirt bloom with a rich harvest. Multiple minor characters spin off this theme and tie it cleverly into a loving romanticisation of small town France. best of festival so far!
Review by on 22 Sep 2010
This is an amiable film, with some well-scripted dialogue and featuring an adorable cat, but sadly, it felt like a missed opportunity. Ironically, missed opportunities (particularly a mother’s to show love to her son) are what the film is about. Germain (played by Gerard Depardieu), is a likeable but shambolic middle-aged man living in the shadow of his elderly mother’s continuing indifference. Life changes for him, though, when he discovers literature through a chance friendship with Margueritte, another elderly woman whom he meets on a park bench.
What bothered me most about this film was the lack of focus, both in the sense of plot, and in the more technical sense of cinematography. Just as the basic storyline was cluttered by extraneous subplots (mostly to do with Germain’s buddies), so the shooting of scenes was marred by jumpy cuts and an almost complete absence of the kind of panning shots that give depth and background. The result was a kind of cosy claustrophobia. Maddeningly, short, dramatised episodes from the books Margueritte reads to Germain are inserted, breaking up the narrative like mini films-within-the-film. Why not simply show the expressions on Germain’s face as he takes in the impact of the words? Similarly, the flashbacks to Germain’s childhood were not effective.
I wondered if a play lay behind this film, since parts of the dialogue were very good. A little research revealed a pre-existing book. Although I wanted to believe in the happy ending provided by Germain’s belated seizing of life’s opportunities, ultimately it felt sentimental and lazy.
The Poet
What bothered me most about this film was the lack of focus, both in the sense of plot, and in the more technical sense of cinematography. Just as the basic storyline was cluttered by extraneous subplots (mostly to do with Germain’s buddies), so the shooting of scenes was marred by jumpy cuts and an almost complete absence of the kind of panning shots that give depth and background. The result was a kind of cosy claustrophobia. Maddeningly, short, dramatised episodes from the books Margueritte reads to Germain are inserted, breaking up the narrative like mini films-within-the-film. Why not simply show the expressions on Germain’s face as he takes in the impact of the words? Similarly, the flashbacks to Germain’s childhood were not effective.
I wondered if a play lay behind this film, since parts of the dialogue were very good. A little research revealed a pre-existing book. Although I wanted to believe in the happy ending provided by Germain’s belated seizing of life’s opportunities, ultimately it felt sentimental and lazy.
The Poet
Review by on 20 Sep 2010
If you do not take to what, for me, is simply a gloriously delightful style of French film (very much in the spirit of a previous hit at the festival Conversations With My Gardener, whose name is even evoked by this feature's English title), my positive reception will not be understood. However, I gauge from the applause (at the re-run) that it was well received.
Nevertheless, although people might have laughed quietly to themselves at largely gentle humour (but interspersed with varying levels of sometimes overt discrimination and even abuse), and, unless one has half an ear to the original language, reading words off the screen can put one a beat or more behind, I judged that some of it was being lost.
What certainly also didn't come over in the subtitles was the old-fasioned purity of expression of Margueritte's French (and so the beauty that I heard in it as a contrast with Germain's and that of most of the others), and there is definitely nothing left of the original title's intimation of a mind that is lying dormant (until she awakes it). Other translations gave a different feeling to the content of the original dialogue, and one text that was recited aloud, not least when it had been shown as sought out as easier to read, seemed more opaque than the others.
There is much in common with Conversations, such as the generosity of the motives (and the utter lack of condescension where it most matters), and even the fact that both of the less well-educated characters have green fingers. (As in that case, I am inclined to look out the book from which this film was adapted.) There was additionally a similar feeling of hurt (though greater here) between comparing the results of different educations (and, in the case of Conversations, lifestyles), particularly one that had penalised Germain and ridiculed him time and again in front of everyone else, and continued to do so.
He was only to be redeemed, in the scope of our time with him, by the insight of the two women in his life, who could clearly see his generosity and loveableness for their true worth. In the case of each relationship, respect on both sides is felt for the other, and companionship and friendship are seen as valued responses to the sharing of experiences that have hitherto been alien to that person's world. Finally, though not wishing to push the resemblance too far, but there is a final (and crucial) link in the matter of inheritance, which, in the case of Conversations, brought about the circumstances of the story, and here altered them.
Each film shows something of what matters about being human, when the pettiness, anger and competitiveness of life are stripped away. I know that I will, as I did with Conversations, be coming back to My Afternoons, and I fully expect that attention to be well repaid.
Nevertheless, although people might have laughed quietly to themselves at largely gentle humour (but interspersed with varying levels of sometimes overt discrimination and even abuse), and, unless one has half an ear to the original language, reading words off the screen can put one a beat or more behind, I judged that some of it was being lost.
What certainly also didn't come over in the subtitles was the old-fasioned purity of expression of Margueritte's French (and so the beauty that I heard in it as a contrast with Germain's and that of most of the others), and there is definitely nothing left of the original title's intimation of a mind that is lying dormant (until she awakes it). Other translations gave a different feeling to the content of the original dialogue, and one text that was recited aloud, not least when it had been shown as sought out as easier to read, seemed more opaque than the others.
There is much in common with Conversations, such as the generosity of the motives (and the utter lack of condescension where it most matters), and even the fact that both of the less well-educated characters have green fingers. (As in that case, I am inclined to look out the book from which this film was adapted.) There was additionally a similar feeling of hurt (though greater here) between comparing the results of different educations (and, in the case of Conversations, lifestyles), particularly one that had penalised Germain and ridiculed him time and again in front of everyone else, and continued to do so.
He was only to be redeemed, in the scope of our time with him, by the insight of the two women in his life, who could clearly see his generosity and loveableness for their true worth. In the case of each relationship, respect on both sides is felt for the other, and companionship and friendship are seen as valued responses to the sharing of experiences that have hitherto been alien to that person's world. Finally, though not wishing to push the resemblance too far, but there is a final (and crucial) link in the matter of inheritance, which, in the case of Conversations, brought about the circumstances of the story, and here altered them.
Each film shows something of what matters about being human, when the pettiness, anger and competitiveness of life are stripped away. I know that I will, as I did with Conversations, be coming back to My Afternoons, and I fully expect that attention to be well repaid.
Review by on 19 Sep 2010
Heart of film Casadesus & Depardieu v good but too many other plotlines; director Q&A excellent
Film details
My Afternoons With Margueritte (La Tete en Friche)
Actor: Gerard Depardieu
Director: Jean Becker
Actor: Gisèle Casadesus
Actor: François-Xavier Demaison
Director: Jean Becker
Actor: Gisèle Casadesus
Actor: François-Xavier Demaison
France, 2010.
82 mins. French with English subtitles.
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