Liebe deinen Vater

The high level of acting and the intensity of the performances raised the overall quality of the film. Though aspects of the film may have been somewhat unrealistic,it was certainly true to itself. I also believe that it just as easily relates to any father/son relationship (where there is an inability to get past ones self and their own feelings)as it does to a famous father/son relationship. As one of the other people who issued a comment "that the film was only a form of therapy for the director" I would say that almost any work of art that is deeply felt is in a sense a form of therapy for the artist. Hopefully the therapy helped. I certainly enjoyed it.

I must begin by emphasizing that the English title of this film is completely inappropriate. The correct translation of the French title is the imperative- Love Your Father.I think this fact is very key in the director's intention, as the story is really about that construct and not that of the erroneous The Loving Father.

I rarely feel so differently from other IMDb posters as I apparently do on this film. For me, Love Your Father was very realistic in its portrayal of all of the characters and their interactions.The messiness of it all, the many unanswered questions of motivation and action,history and future, were all part of a very realistic believable picture of a highly dysfunctional family.I suspected that the end would not clean up the mess,and it did not. However, I did think that the ferry and Nobel scenes showed that the brother and sister had finally really understood and accepted that they would never get what they had always wanted, and they could move forward as adults.As unexplained as it was, the very end gave me an interpretation of the future for the main character,cleanly echoed in the overlaid words of the Nobel recitation.So I did experience closure.

What I took away from the film is that great artists create and give great art to the world; they are driven to do this; it is not a rational or controllable decision for them. At the same time, they are often incapable of giving great things anywhere else in their lives.Almost invariably , they cannot give friends and family the love those people crave and deserve. So the 'loved ones' suffer immensely. Many other films and books have shown this irony; I thought Love Your Father did a terrific job of exposing it.

There were some amazing performances in this movie, as, at times, it delved into interesting material about parenting and relationships with neglectful parents. However, each time when the characters started to dig deeper within themselves to reveal more, the movie interrupted the focus--often into rather irrelevant directions. This is probably because most people with emotional baggage attempt to confront the past but become scared and run from it. Despite this, I still wanted to see much more exploration between the father and son. In addition, I wanted to see more than just a one-dimensional performance by the daughter throughout all but the closing moments of the film (she always seemed intensely and disproportionately angry throughout the film). It was as if the movie was put into production before there was a chance to edit and do re-writes and smooth out all the details--especially the very end of the film that made very little sense. Overall, it's interesting and has moments but could have been better.

By the way, Gerard's real life son plays his son in the movie. He looked an awful lot like a French version of Julian Sands (the somewhat obscure English actor).

"A Loving Father" tells of a writer who is en route to pick up his Nobel prize when his trip is interrupted by an estranged son. This road trip flick focuses on the real life father/son Depardieu duo as it meanders through a spotty mire of family dysfunction issues. The sometimes engaging story is fraught with moments of implausibility, a seemingly concocted conclusion, and a trite moral which seems to be "Love your children because payback's a bitch". With good quality in all aspects except story, "A Loving Father" has been largely ignored by the critics and received only a few fringe awards with nominal plaudits from the public. Only for fans of the players or French cinema. (B-)

This piece can hardly be regarded as movie: some aspects suggests it is intended to be one (actors, story, materials used etc.), but actually it is self-therapy effort for director Jacob Berger, whose father was John Berger well known English writer. It seems that the father figure (or at lest his artistic success) suppressed the talent of his son, and he wanted to release himself from this pressure by talking about it. But alas he used movie as a medium instead of visiting a psychiatrist: his problem remains personal, we can not relate to it. As a movie it is very poor, full of improbabilities, primitive psychology, and one-dimensional characters. I do not think anyone can profit from seeing this movie. One from twenty-five stars.