Daddy Nostalgie

I second Victoria's comments. A profoundly moving film.

Caroline loves her father and craves his attention, but he has lived a self-indulgent life and never gave her the time and affection she needed. Now, as time is running out, they both strive to heal their relationship.

A superbly successful investigation of the relationship between a woman and her father, that both analyzes their feelings and narrates their efforts to reach each other, and which ends in a timeless, transcendental moment capturing the bittersweet and ephemeral nature of life.

For me,as a man, the film gave insight into the father/daughter relationship; I notice that young women gave this film a higher rating than other groups.

Also, one of the few English language films of Jane Birkin widely available in the USA, along with Dust and Kung Fu Master. A uniquely sensitive actress with a large body of work in French cinema.

Daddy Nostalgie centers its attention on Jane Birkin's character, Caroline, who is a successful screenwriter based in Paris. As the story opens, she receives a call from her mother explaining that her father is in the hospital recovering from heart surgery. Tony Russell, her father, played by Dirk Bogarde in his final role, was a successful international salesman who had to spend much of his career traveling abroad. Caroline, ever the dutiful daughter, then travels to the Cote d'Azur to be by her parents' side during this family crisis. During this time, Caroline finally has a chance to get to know her father for what might be the first time.

While most films tend to gloss over the more complex and lasting aspects of familial relationships, this film focuses on them. In life, every action is steeped in history, and every action carries with it consequences for good and/or for ill. This film is true to that reality. Daddy Nostalgie examines how people live with the consequences of their actions, how those consequences often echo through the generations, and how we can both love and hate someone at the same time.

What makes this film superior is how the director is able to show the emotional complexity of the characters. They are forced to confront many opposites, such as love and hate, life and death, marriage and divorce. While struggling to remain calm on the surface, each character must try to suppress the emotions being churned up within. Tavernier is able to show how everyone is successful, but only to a point, of maintaining such a false front. All are trying to hide their feelings from the others, but also from themselves. And it is why and how they maintain these facades that make this film both interesting and bittersweet.

Faultless in execution - but I couldn't relate to the characters, nor to the situation. Neither tragedy, nor comedy ... it just dragged on interminably. I only watched because of a certain nostalgic feeling for the bygone days of Dirk Bogarde; ironically I found Jane Birkin's performance much more engrossing (his, not at all, actually). Or, perhaps it was her beauty and animation that kept me watching.

Although gentle in presentation, this film packs a wallop. The wonderful Dirk Bogarde, in his final role, portrays a man in failing health staring mortality in the face. His wife and daughter deal with him and his impending demise as best they can, but the past weighs heavily on all of them, a source of both great pleasure and intense regret.

The beautiful setting on the coast of France is an ironic backdrop, a sun kissed panorama of holiday pleasure, against which the three protagonists struggle to accept the disappointments of the past and the daunting future that lingers ever closer.

The performances are note perfect, capturing the flashes of tenderness, regret and anxiety that play out in a never-ending merry-go-round of conflicting emotions. But it is the terrifically subtle screenplay and masterful direction of Taverner that makes the viewer feel they are witnessing a genuine experience of life rather than a filmed entertainment.

This film is not for everyone, but the audience that is receptive to its charms will feel deeply moved and enriched by the experience.

After extensive heart surgery, a retired businessman living in the south of France returns home to convalesce. There he is visited by his daughter Caroline. As his health declines, Caroline is confronted by all the familiar behaviour patterns of her relationship with her mother and father.

This is an exquisite example of cinematic subtlety and understatement from Tavernier, Bogarde and Birkin. Tavernier enables his actors to create an intensely realistic 'family' - proud father, long-suffering mother, loving yet insecure daughter - all struggling to come to terms with the fragility of life. Bogarde and Birkin are deeply moving as father and daughter, clumsily struggling to communicate as adults after a lifetime of parent and child, and Laure provides selfless support, raging silently against the inevitable.

As a study of life's finite nature, this is faultless. As a final outing for Bogarde, it is a fitting and extraordinary tribute to a master-craftsman of the cinema.