El verano de las maravillas

Quite simply this is one of the Best French films of the last fifty years. The relatively unknown Jean-Loup Hubert has produced the kind of film that the overrated Godard could not turn out if you gave him a hundred years (to be fair to the semi-Amateur Godard he would probably have no interest in addressing the Human Condition in such a refreshing straightforward fashion). In terms of story it would be difficult to find something more basic - at one end of the spectrum a married couple living in rural Brittany have slowly grown apart since losing a child, at the other end is nine year old Louis, a city boy from Paris sent to spend a summer with the couple so that his mother (an old friend of the wife) may have her second child without the encumbrance of her first. In other words this is our old friend the bildungsroman/coming-of-age/rites-of-passage movie, the one we've seen so many times before but, as I've said before, it's all in the wrist. The tone is set from the first with a wistful, haunting music track leading us into a nineteen fifties French countryside preserved in amber as Christine Pascal (billed only as the mother of Louis) entrusts her son (Antoine Hubert) to the care of her friend Marcelle (Anemone) and her husband Pelo (Richard Bohringer). This is a French film and French film in a rural setting so we meet Marcelle as she is removing the eye of a rabbit with a knife as a prelude to skinning it. It's a great metaphor for the changes Louis will experience in the next few weeks (you don't see this in Paris, kid) and it also prepares us, the audience, for an arguably alien lifestyle embracing outside privys and indoor chamber pots. Writer-director Hubert (he adapted his own autobiographical novel for the screen) bravely cast his own son, Antoine, in the key role of Louis, despite the boy's complete lack of acting experience and the experiment paid off handsomely. Nor can we argue that he found it easy to coax a performance from his own flesh and blood because he has coaxed an even better performance from Vanessa Guedi as Martine, the ten-year-old tomboy who teaches Louis so much in such a short time. Matching the performances of the two children are those of the two principal adults Anemone and Richard Bohringer, both more than deserving of the Cesars they won as respectively Best Actress and Best Actor. I have been aware of this film for several years but have never been able to track it down until now when I finally located the DVD. On the initial viewing I was overwhelmed and I know it is one I will return to again and again. 10/10

This is one of the rare movies that combine all the elements to tell a meaningful story in a light, pleasant, funny, and very touching way. Very French in the best sense. At the end you know how the future will be, how the story will continue, and you are happy.

A really superior film, this story of a 9 year-old boy leaving his mother temporarily to live in a small French town. He becomes educated to the ways of adults with the help of a worldy-wise girl aged 10. Although children are featured, this definitely is an adult movie, not one for small children.

An uplifting and disturbing film. A heady mixture of innocence and sensuality. Maybe it was the person that I saw this film with, but it showed the sort of summer I (and she) would dearly love to have experienced. If you follow enough French, see it in the original.

I remember of "Le grand Chemin", as if i were there in this movie as in my own life in a different period. As if little things of life which can be worthless for grow up can be very important to children, for lifetime . I remember Vanessa Guedj who i miss and who i do not see anymore actually. I remember of this atmosphere where untold stories are more painful than the words. I remember the childhood universe that we are building to "go away", i remember that a whole lifetime does not matter, that everything is done and that the bad part of it can finally be the good part of life. (sorry for my English). is n't this any lines ? Now it's OK so...