Der ungeratene Sohn

If Claude Sautet is most known for his films about middle class, he signs there an excellent movie about the father-son relationship, both belonging to the working class. Patrick Dewaere is the "bad" son, returning home from the US and prison, with a drug addict and trafficker past. He's great, just right the whole movie. As always, I'm tempted to say. Yves Robert, the father, is a discovery for me as an actor and a good surprise. I knew him merely as director - he directed a handful of popular success. His play was at Dewaere's height and scenes with both of us together a real delight. The supporting roles, with Brigitte Fossey and Jacques Durilho, are also very good and give us some of the nicest scenes (the opera!).

The movie in itself stays a classic Sautet if I can say, even in this different settings, letting place to the characters, time to take its course. Showing the simple things of life. Kindliness for his characters. Caring for the little details. I don't know if this is because he is focused on this relationship and not on the description of a certain world, or if this is because he films a social background he knows less and with a generation that is not his, but it works really well, better than most of his middle-class movies.

If the misunderstanding between father and son is the motor of the movie, everyone knowing them, including the spectator, can only witness how similar they are but never at the same wavelength. Sautet adds nice secondary plots and manages a beautiful movie until a wonderful ending.

It is not a film to be explained, it is a film to be lived! It goes straight to the heart, simply to the essential. Exceptional in truth and authenticity with a great casting of exceptionnal actors. Wonderful!

Claude Sautet's films are always rich in introspective thought, whether the subject is the fragility of existence (Les choses de la vie), the unconditional love of a man toward a woman that wants out of a relationship (César et Rosalie) or the everyday struggles to make it through ordinary existences (Vincent, François, Paul et les autres). In Un mauvais fils, Patrick Dewaere is paradoxely a good person who has made very bad decisions, but now wants to make amends and get a better life, all the while his father is still grieving the death of his wife.

Remarkably, while being usually casted in loser roles, Dewaere redeems himself from loser status to become a good son, a reliable worker and a strong support of his addicted girlfriend. It's too bad that we lost this prodigious actor too early, struggling himself with addiction and depression.

I'm the second to review this? I borrowed this film from a local French library. I sat down with a coffee and was entranced with from beginning to end.

The film is about the relationship between a father and son. The son returns to France and to life after several years in an American gaol. The son wants to begin relations with his father anew but the father has trouble with that idea.

You could say that the father is someone who is strict and has trouble expressing his feelings and opening himself up. He is ruthlessly unforgiving with his son. This is not a one dimensional character and thats what makes him so intriguing.

Equally Partick Deweare, whom I've come to know and love, is enchantic as the son. He oozes charm and his mere presence on the screen without saying a word conveys so many things.

The two fight and make up then fight and make up, and like another reviewer said the director takes the time to film them preparing coffee. Even that is fascinating in this film. A true find for me and pure cinematic gem. Enjoy!

This is one of the more effective films by Sautet, a director who made commercial pictures with Romy Schneider all through the 70's. While I admired the artistry of Les choses de la vie and Cesar et Rosalie, I was a little put off by the rich decors and bourgeois sentiments. Un mauvais fils is a look at blue collar workers--Rene Calgagni is the foreman on a construction site, his son Bruno works first in trucking, then as a furniture maker, then in a bookstore. Madeleine, Rene's girlfriend runs a dry cleaning shop. Bruno is trying to remake his life after the prison sentence, and the difficulties of re-insertion into society are well-described by Sautet.

Patrick Dewaere gives a restrained performance, lacking most of the extraverted action that made Series noire and La meilleure facon de marcher so memorable. Yves Robert, despite the mustache that reminds us of Stalin, is very affecting as the severe father who doesn't know what to do with his errant son. Jacques Dufilho, playing a gay bookseller with many whimsical moments, earned the Cesar award for best supporting actor. Brigitte Fossey, playing a heroin addict who can't quite stay away from the drug even as she becomes involved with Bruno, has some fine scenes.