"La beauté du monde" would deal with the return of a soldier from Mali and his difficulties to adjust to civilian life." "le soleil reviendra " deals with the ordeals of a pregnant woman waiting for her love fighting in Afghanistan .
She meets other soldiers' wives (or widows)and there's a strong camaraderie and solidarity between them ;one of them lost her husband four years ago but she remained true to him (a moving visit to the cemetery) ; but the most harrowing scene shows a woman gone crazy ,after the loss of her husband a long long time ago ;in the restaurant where the heroine works as a waitress ,she comes every day for a tête-à tête meal with him,acting as if he were still alive : feeling compassion for this woman who could never come to terms with her tragedy , she plays along with her and serves the imaginary guest ,asking him if it's all right and if he enjoys his meal.
The movie esssentially depicts the everyday life of a woman,whose pregnancy adds to her anguish ; once again ,there are very long conversations which may be sometimes tedious ;but the director smartly introduces a male character , whose wife is a soldier ,and who's become a house husband ,a thing which would have been unthinkable before the Gulf War where this situation was not rare. Carron is a feminist.
One may attack Carron for her praise of military sacred noble values ;but she's not one -sided ;one of her friends tells her about a colonel who left his own daughter and pretended he did not see her when he met her once in the metro.
In its last part , if the movie does not fall into the trap of tear-jerker melodrama, it is entirely due to Carron's natural feeling for economy and sparseness which avoids all forms of conventional sentimentality and self-pity .
Even though religion is totally absent (the heroine never resorts to prayer) ,the prologue shows a mother urging her soldier son to keep a Virgin Mary medal on him ; and the ending is nothing but some kind of miracle (which will remind the viewer of the moving arm in the sprawling "le fils d'un roi").
