Very Cool!!!

Just what I expected

How sad is this?

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I have just come from the FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL in Richmond, VA (2008), where I saw this film. I don't view a lot of American films, so I can't adequately compare, but I do know American film makers don't develop relationships between people the way French film makers do. While American films seem to give little short glimpses into people's lives, French film makers give us long conversations between actors and show us how one person can change the life of another.In this film, the artist comes home to his roots. When he advertises for a gardener to work the potager at his old family home, an old school mate applies for the job. As they reconnect through the work, each contributes to the other's life. It's interesting to see how the artist's paintings changed as he was influenced by his friend.The film deals with life, death, family, gardening, painting, sickness and other realities of life. The scenery is beautiful, the actors realistic, and the story believable.When the director answered questions at the end of the screening, it was very interesting to hear the Americans trying to insert and look for symbolism in many of the scenes, but the director's replies indicated that symbolism was not intended, rather bare content.I so enjoyed this film and wish I had a copy of it to entertain others with at my home. English subtitles are there, but if you understand French, you will get much more out of this movie. I found the English subtitles very British and not conveying the French spirit at times, but if you don't know the difference, it won't matter.

With Les Enfants du Marais Jacques Becker made a great film that reminded us of Marcel Pagnol (when I said as much to him last night when he attended a screening of this, his latest release, he was gracious enough to say I had paid him a great compliment) and now he has made an equally wonderful film that is slightly reminiscent of Michael Radford's Il Postino; reminiscent it that it celebrates a friendship between a simple workman and a sophisticated artist but different in that here the two men had been school-friends before going their separate ways, whilst in Il Postino they met only when thrown together in adulthood. This is simply one of the most lyrical, deceptively simple films of the last several years and I have no hesitation in bracketing it with other 'small' films that have moved me immeasurably such as Brodeuses, Se Souvenirs des belles choses, Venus Beaute etc. If there is any truth in the claim made by one reviewer that Becker tends to divide critics and public then am I definitely with the public although I do enjoy films about Paris intellectuals as well as films like this one. Unbelievably it has yet to find a distributor in England and it may well be that English distributors read and are influenced by negative French critics. If so, shame on them, for this deserves to be screened at every cinema in the land.

Our usual group of 4 Dutch, Filipino, Chinese Malaysian, and French did enjoy so much this movie screened in Sydney these past few weeks. As said before simple but without simplicity. This was also my sentiment, I imagine my french background took my enjoyment even a little further. I can't say I never had much passion for gardening although I do appreciate nature in general. But I like animals and people behaviour; it is so often fascinating. This is what this story did for me, it brought fascinating union and mutual respect between two very different people, this in a rather natural way. I let myself go with the gentle flow of the tale and rode the few bumps here and there as life scatters them. I won't talk about the story line since I'm sure it's been read many time before these lines. There weren't a crowd either in the cinema, only one more couple and one lone other person. Yet the story took you from the start and you did not need a crowd around to help you along. It was almost like a personal experience that somehow made you feel as if you were part of this dialogue. I do much appreciate Daniel Auteuil whom I discovered for the first time with G de Pardieu in "Jean des Florettes" and "Manon des Sources" Much as happened since and for both of them but one seems to have been imunised from Hollywood and is better for it in my opinion.

I found the movie rather disappointing. Despite an excellent director and a great cast, the movie doesn't rise above the caricature of what life "should" be in the French countryside.Auteuil and Daroussin are both struggling with dialogs that sound too poetic to be true. I couldn't help thinking that the "poetic gardener" character is just the idea that Parisian intellectuals have of life outside the capital.That might also be one of the few movies where Auteuil just doesn't get it right.If you want to watch a Jean Becker movie, pick any but not this one...