Malabar Princess

I thought this was a beautiful movie. The movie is set in a picturesque alpine village where life seems so much simpler than in a modern Australian city. It was nice to "escape" for an hour and a half.

An 8 year old boy, Tom, is taken by his father to stay with his grandfather (who he does not know) for a while. The boy is at first reluctant to stay with his grandfather, but over the course of the movie the affection between the two grows. The boy's mother disappeared in the Alps five years previously, and the boy seems obsessed with finding out more about the circumstances of her disappearance. Is she dead? Could she still be alive?

Tom goes to school in the village, and makes friends with an older boy. They have adventures together as Tom tries to work out ways to get higher in the Alps to look for his lost mother.

The movie ends on a positive note, with a reconciliation between the boy and his distant father.

When I hear the word "moving" about a film, I usually fear the worst in the form of sentimental, self-indulgent tripe. This movie skilfully steers away from those perils. Light-hearted comedy and fascination for death are mixed in this truly moving film reminiscent of the all-time French classic "Les jeux interdits".

The storyline: Tom is about ten and gets dumped on his grandfather Gaspard (Jacques Villeret), because his mother is dead, and his father is a train driver who is ofter away and cannot give the child the attention he needs. The grandfather lives at the bottom of the very glacier that swallowed up the child's mother five years before. Tom's troubled history is manifested by problems such as dyslexia and anxiety. These sombre themes are balanced by comedy, and by the endearing characters played by Laroque and Villeret. Claude Brasseur is excellent as a rather unsettling garage owner obsessed with finding the treasure hidden on the India Airways plane named Malabar Princess, that crashed on the glacier fifty years earlier (that much is authentic). Finding the treasure involves using dynamite, and on occasions he brings back human remains to be kept in bottles. The whole script is as if seen through the eyes of a child, with crude realism mixed to dream-like fantasies. Jacques Villeret's baby face and innocent outlook further contribute to anchor the film into the world of childhood.

The beauty of the mountain, the great white mass of the glacier makes for beautiful images and powerful symbolism. The troubled and troubling questions of the child about what happens to people who die in a crevasse culminates in the experiment he practices on stolen chickens shut up alive in the freezer ("you told me my mother didn't suffer, because she had a thick feather coat"). Despite all this, the tone is quite light-hearted, and quite appropriate for viewing with children.

... which, in this case, is a collective noun I've seen fit to coin. It will be a great pity if this delightful entry doesn't make it out of France - why, when it has been playing in Paris for at least a couple of weeks it is still classed as being in the Cutting Room is beyond me. Jacques Villeret with a moustache yet for once plays it relatively straight, the normally drop-dead gorgeous Michelle Laroque plays down her usual vivaciousness to play, would you believe, a school marm buried in a tiny hamlet high in the mountains, and oh, yes, there's a kid, a Straw-Hat circuit low-budget Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn fish-out-of-water along to create low-key havoc. Charm is good to describe this entry shot on location at altitudes where you can all but TASTE the crispness in the air and as a realistic antidote to the Heidi-like idyll realism rears its nasty head in a scene where a dead farm horse is unceremoniously carted off on the back of a wagon to the knacker's yard or - we are, after all in France - to a one-star Michelin restaurant. For the record - if not for the curious - Malabar Princess is the name of an airplane that crashed in the area just before the first day of shooting. A great feel-good entry. 8/10

Hi, I have seen this movie and it impresses me from all the degrees and angles. The beauty of direction, acting of the kid (Jules) and the grand father; the school teacher his dad etc...

I was really touched by the entire movie; all scenes are nicely crafted. Ahh when the horse dies.... "I want to cry... You are not the only one, kid".

hmm the kids also talk Bin Laden.. and then how they sneak in the chopper to the mountain :)

and many more small scene makes the film a great piece of work.

Thanks for making such a lovely, innocent and beautiful movie. Regards, Mukesh

Jacques Villeret is the best actor in the world, period.

Although his "Gaspard" (no surname) is similar to his "Jojo Braconnier" in "Un crime au Paradis", he never grows weary, nor do we. Such honesty is rare.

The film's plot is trite. Its development could be less melodramatic but. I didn't complete like Tom, the protagonist, but he's good at making and unbearably stubborn child not be hateable, but to understand his mourning and flights to fantasy (he's no angel, make no mistake). Claude Brasseur makes an eerily similar character to his superb role in "camping". Again, he's a man who loves cars, money and stereotypes a bit too much :), but he carries it off like if he was born for the role.

Clovis Cornillac is a young father who could be more convincing, but that's the story's fault, who shows him making completely different choices in the beginning and the end.

As usual with French films, the "country and the city" subplot is like a river, always full of energy. From the difference in vocabulary and "useful knowledge" to the way to educate/discipline children and treat women, all is different, and yet, as we're in a comedy of sorts, all is happily solved within a few minutes.

The technical aspects are fine. You feel the mountain, the cold, and the piano theme is perfect for the action. Not too romantic, but with feelings.

Nice for a Saturday evening.