Die Stadt frisst ihre Kinder

In the contemporary Marseilles, Michèle (Ariane Ascaride) is a worker in the fishing market. She supports her family, composed by her unemployed husband, her addicted daughter Fiona (Julie-Marie Parmentier) and her granddaughter Ameline. Fiona prostitutes to buy drugs. Paul (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) is a stevedore, who betrays his colleagues and the union in a strike and buy a taxi with his indemnity. Gérard (Gérard Meylan) is a mysterious owner of a bar. Abderramane (Alexandre Ogou) is a black man who left jail and has an affair with a bourgeois. The lives of these characters are interconnected along the story. This movie is about ordinary people and touches in serious wounds in most of the worldwide societies, like unemployment, drugs, violence, crime, prostitution, prejudice against immigrants, loneliness, racism, low salaries, corrupts politicians. There is one particular scene that really touched me, when Michèle comments that only books have happy end. The title "The Town is Quiet" is very ironical and unfortunately the plot shows reality. I do not know if Robert Guédiquian wants to give some hope to the viewer, with that boy magnificently playing the piano he has finally bought in the end, but I found the story very bitter and pessimist. The direction and the performance of the cast are outstanding, and the soundtrack is excellent, highlighting Janis Joplin singing 'Summertime' and 'Cry Baby'. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): 'A Cidade Está Tranquila' ("The Town is Quiet")

A superb film dealing with some of the sensitive issues in France today. I would recommend this to anyone who has a rose tinted view of la belle vie en France as it does not pull any punches when dealing with social issues faced by many - not just in France but in much of the western world.

I watched this film in it's native French language so I may have missed some of the nuances but nonetheless it had the power to affect me and make me quite painfully aware of the issues shown.

Having visited the beautiful tourist side of Marseilles this film, and seen it as a back drop to this drama, the film presented a side I haven't seen before but could relate to through the careful placing of landmarks. It's a pity that we don't see films like this on British TV too often or at a watchable hour!

For a lot of cine buffs ,Marseille evokes the Pagnol Trilogy "Marius" ("Marius et Jeanette,get it?) "Cesar" and "Fanny".But be here now.This is 2000,no longer the thirties."La ville est tranquille" is a thoroughly contemporary movie,the despair of which sometimes recalling such works as "Rosetta".

Actually,it recalls in its form,Julien Duvivier's work,his movies made up of sketches particularly "sous le ciel de Paris"(1952) when all the subplots came together in an almost seamless whole.And as for despair

,Duvivier's movies were pessimism flesh on the bone. Guédiguian's story is more realist,more loachesque ,less melodramatic maybe less storybook or lyrical too.But that does not make a great difference:Duvivier and Kenneth Loach are influences every director can be proud of.

The backbone of "la ville est tranquille" (what an euphemism!) is a mother's struggle with her daughter's addiction,filmed with a realism hard to match.This is an absurd fight,because she's alone -she goes as far as prostituting herself to buy drugs-and because she actually helps her daughter in her fall.

But there are a lot of subplots,most of them as absorbing as the main story :sometimes they interfere with it .The taxi driver sequences,for instance ,do not seem to have a lot to do with it,but after a while a strong connection appears.And before the meeting,we already know the character:a man who 's not found a woman who's got what it takes,he's an old bachelor whose father and mother are longing to see him settled down.these parents are the only characters that have got something of Marcel Pagnol,they are definitely people of the past,not only because they are old,but because class struggle which they championed has become a thing of the past:the sequence in the taxi when the driver sings Pottier's "l'Internationale" in several languages is revealing for that matter.

Mini subplots give the movie substance:a meeting with a disquieting far right leader has a strong contemporary feel:"we like the Aliens,but we do prefer the French (of French extraction).Only the bourgeois couple and its sentimental -and intellectual - problems are irrelevant.

spoilers spoilers spoilers "La ville est tranquille" manages to give the audience a good dose of optimism though.one of the opening shots a young boy playing the piano in order to buy one :he's an Alien too and this vision is almost surrealist.At the very end of the movie ,when the audience seems to have lost any hope,a truck brings the piano to the child prodigy who begins to play.Then a crowd (of rejected?) gathers and ,for a while ,forgets all about its burden. end of spoilers

If there had been any doubts ,this movie finally and firmly placed R.Guédiguian among the greatest,most ambitious directors contemporary French cinema has produced.

A very humanistic film. The persons appearing are really of flesh and blood. Marseille and even France is described as a stagnating society where fascism and racism is increasing. The old methods of the socialist/communist movement to improve the living conditions are generally regarded as obsolete. This is of course a very pessimistic view. But in the same time we feel that the film is taking side for the oppressed persons. Besides the misery we also meet men and women with warm hearts. The way the persons appear and how the story is told is so captivating that this must be regarded as one of the great films this year.

One is used to British director's Leach and Loach concerning furious films about the working class, but Robert Guédiguian beats them. Not that his fury is lesser, but it's more quiet and therefore maybe more effective. This is about Marseille working class, drawn down in every aspect because of the globalization and a capitalism which is stronger and more destructive than for many decades. Even the conventional left-wing politicians seem to have abdicated completely and that is why Le Pen is very popular among these people. If you see this movie you indeed might understand why.

Beside the critic of capitalism and especially it's maybe most disgusting form, the drug trade, there is also drama here. You get really engaged in ten people's life and the people are not uncomplicated, "although" they are working class. The acting is marvelous, especially from Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Gérard Meylan.

See this one. It's almost a masterpiece