Mein Vater, der Held

This film is a corker! It is one of depardieu's finest, and is well worth watching! I saw this film and was instantly put off by the fact it was subtitled (I only speak french adequately, not well enough to get by with a whole film!) but after 2 minutes I was engrossed! This film is a MUST!!!!

Please do not pass this film by, it is worth all the effort to find it (I found mine on Amazon co.u.k), and similar to other forum users I watched the USA version first.

Without going over the film details all of which have been written in this forum and in much better detail than I can muster, all I can say that this should not be compared to the USA version as the French version is far superior in every way.

I gave this a 7.5 out of 10, one point missing as the transfer from a VHS take can only be considered very poor, but having said that I would not part with my DVD copy for ten times what I paid for it. Enough said, this is a top French comedy, and Gerard Depardieu out acts everyone again, this is a forgotten French gem :)

I actually discovered that there were two versions of this film, both by the same director, both including Gérard Depardieu, but in the first one, most of the actors are French and it is set on the Isle of Mauritius, and the second, the characters bar Depardieu are mostly American and the film is set in the West Indies or Bahamas but not Mauritius. Why make two films with the same plot ? I just don't know.

In my opinion, the better of the two was the first one which is set in Mauritius. Unfortunately, this one is NOT available on DVD and the other IS !! I bought the DVD, thinking I was getting the FIRST but got the SECOND ! Very confusing, especially when the main actor is the same person.

I preferred the characters in the first film and found it funnier..but that is of course just personal judgment. I was also pleased to see shots of Mauritius which is a lovely place. In the first film, Depardieu was speaking French, his native language, in the second he was speaking English ......he was obviously less at ease in the humorous situations !! To understand this you need to be able to speak French and, more important, heard Depardieu get irritated in his mother tongue. It's indescribably funny and cannot be translated into another language. That's what I think clinches it for this first of the two films !!

This French movie was re-made only two years later by Disney (so this is as close as I've ever come to reviewing a Disney movie). The story is about a divorced French father (Gerard Depardieu) who takes his resentful adolescent daughter (Marie Gillain) on a beach vacation. It starts out as kind of a farce when his daughter tells everyone at the resort that her father is actually her much older lover, but it turns much more sentimental and sweet when she meets a boy close to her own age, and her father is forced to realize that she's growing up and he has to let her go. There's no doubt this movie is less saccharine and cloying than the American Disney version, but it is also much more innocent and "family-friendly" than most French "coming-of-age-on-the-beach" movies like Eric Rohmers "Pauline on the Breach" or Catherine Breillat's "Fillete 36". This movie is actually completely appropriate for teenagers--except that American teenagers, of course, cannot be called on to read subtitles, thus the unnecessary Hollywood re-make.

Gerard Depardieu (who also starred in the re-make) is quite good in the role of the father. It's quite easy to accept Depardieu as a kind of Gallic Robert Deniro, but his status as a sex symbol is perhaps a little more baffling. Here though at least he keeps his clothes on (thank god) and he doesn't really romance any improbably attractive women. Improbably attractive, however, is a good description of the actress, Marie Gillain, who plays the daughter. She was probably sixteen or seventeen here, but could have easily passed for twenty, and with the revealing swimwear she models, she would probably have a pack of slobbering guys following her everywhere even in France (or perhaps especially in France). It's a little hard therefore to buy her as a shy, awkward fourteen-year-old working up to her first kiss. She gives a game performance though, and whereas her equivalent in the American version, Katherine Heigl, would go onto "Gray's Anatomy" and many horrible Hollywood romantic comedies, each more horrible than the last, Gillain has had a more low-profile, but much more interesting career.

This would make a good companion piece either to other fairly "family-friendly" movies with Depardieu like "Cyrano", or to other Gallic teen flicks fit for a high school French class like "La Boum". Not my usual cup of tea, given the Disney connection, but I'd still recommend it.

I had been searching for this film I saw on the BBC years and years ago every so often, when people began chatting about films, I would ask everyone, "It stars Gerard Depardieu and he goes somewhere with this girl who's stunning and uses her beauty and, urgh! I can't remember what it's called but it's amazing!!". Everyone looks confused and no-one knows the title. I eventually gave up. Then thanks to the internet, I recently found it! And I bought it. And it is even better than I remembered! The story is simple but perfect. A middle class divorced father and his beautiful daughter (who he dotes on but as with most teenagers doesn't appreciate it much) go to a resort and she quickly pretends he is her lover who is only claiming to be her dad. She gets the attention and sympathy from cute guys nearer her own age and the whole story just develops brilliantly. She is stunning and he has his typical charm and so the whole thing is completely believable from start to finish. Of course, the story has more than that, including some nice little subplots, but I don't want to spoil it. The highlights are Gerard Depardieu's wonderful acting and the fast- paced script. With those excellent sarcastic comments and funny expressions as he deals with his little girl pushing him to the edge of sanity (plus people occasionally trying to hurt him, and once almost kill him) the moments for the highlight real count up fast. Apart from some of the known French classic films this movie is a total gem way above the rest within the French film industry. It's that good, really. I'm not sure this is the very, very best comedy ever but it's definitely in my top 3 for sure. Constant laughs and father-daughter dynamics which are totally accurate make sure of that for me. Even my mother, who is rarely impressed by French films, fell in love with this as much as I did again after all these years.