Vertraute Fremde

I'm not nine years old, so I don't read manga.

The story has been done about a million times, both forward and backwards. This variation has a sweet French touch to it with a little bit of French adolescent sexiness thrown it for good measure. It's like a French version of the movie Big, but with an existential twist. Unfortunately, it isn't quite as entertaining as that Hollywood take on age reversal.

More than anything, Quartier Lointain is a skip down memory lane in a French village in a simpler time. I think that modern Europeans believe those times still exist which is why so many have a second home in their native villages. Things haven't changes so much, as least in some places.

What drew me to this movie was just how bright and handsome everything appears, from the characters, to the geography, to the village, to the interiors. Who wouldn't want to live in this almost perfect world? Even the darn dog is perfect. His little girlfriend is a heartbreaker, even at fourteen. Younger siblings are mostly a pain in the neck, but his sister is sweeter than anything in a pâtisserie.

Since they really didn't go anywhere with the childhood romance angle, I would have preferred they used this film time to explore the adult character's life.

Quartier Lointain (or A Distant Neighborhood for the English title) is an enjoyable movie to watch. Not really a comedy if you ask me, more a drama with a pinch of fantasy. The story is slow paced, a bit too slow to be honest, with not much going on, but still the viewer is drawn into the story. A story that makes you wonder where it goes, not fully explained but that didn't really matter in the end. The cast are all unknown to me but overal they did a good job enough to keep me interested. Worth a watch if you don't expect too much action, just an interesting story.

Can a movie be the imagetrack of your childhood memories? Can a movie put you in such a disharmonic relationship with time?With what you were?With what you are?With what you could be? Out of the thousands of movies i've watched in my entire life,only very few can answer affirmatively to the above questions. Quartier Lointain does that in a very disarming and welcoming way.It puts you in a time bubble were allthe smaller or bigger significancies of the Past,the Present and the Future coexist in a mutual process of self cancellation.The drowned pain of a meaningless life(father),the life-affirming enthusiasm of the first love(girlfriend),the bitterness of an unjustified abandonment(by the father),the urge to please someone that can no longer be pleased(mother),all poured out of the psyche's Pandora box.You cannot intervene,you cannot change the course of things.All you can do is to passively feel.

The movie brings in time where parents were young and alive, sun brighter and life easier. I would also wish to get my mum out from daily routine. To some ice cream and trips... That movie awake best feelings and memories. And memories are what ultimately remain in our life.

story to a movie is what voice once has been to a song...

this is still valid for European movies, and "Quartier lointain" is an example of this. alright, it is probably not the best movie ever, but the story has soul, even if the story is small, but life is knitted together with small stories like this.

the search for love, the feeling of something lost, the memory of past desires and forgotten anxieties, the wish to turn back time, the dreams of dreams...

a story moving in its own pace, no flashes and exaltations, just a fragment in the life, that should not be spent in vain