Milou en mai

I've long felt that Louis Malle was my favourite French director. Pushing out the cinematic envelope with his honest perceptions about real people, but with a sort of steady verve. They can be challenging, always absorbing but none like Milou in May -

• which is one of wonderfully loose 'no lectures today' sort of light comedies about the country-set all getting hot and bothered about sorting out funeral arrangements. The fact is that there's a national strike which causes difficulties for the various interested parties in getting there and that Paris is literally burning with the '68 student riots. But those same facts are wonderfully incidental, revealing maybe how different the upper middle class country retreats are away from poor, clashing students in the big City. Physically, socially and economically.

A playful Stefan Grapelli score delights, with a lush, so lush (it IS May) cinematography which added the cream on top of the cake, with added witty dialogue, and almost fantastical characters. They might be a little caricatured, but with an oh! so, charismatic lead. We all dreamed of uncles like that when we were ten years old! As they hang about waiting for the rest to turn up, the lazy, hazy May afternoon strolls on, with a wisp of sex and drug taking, it's an intoxicating blend of slight naughtiness to spice up a usually (for most people) unpleasant but necessary gathering.

This is Kodachrome Malle, rather than his monochrome.

Louis Malle was one of the most notable members of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) french movement that was an alternative to film reconstructions historical and literary adaptations commonly "infidels" as they used to do filmmakers Delannoy, Autant-Lara and some others, because, unlike these, the New Wave advocated an approach to the problem of the individual to privacy, their personal experiences.

But like the rest of their comrades (with the exception of Truffaut), Louis Malle also realized that this new path, it could anchor a bourgeois and individualistic conception of life and needed to be linked to analysis of social problems, seeking more openness and greater narrative ideological commitment. So did "Lacombe Lucien", an energetic recreation of the effects left by fascism. And, among others, "Alamo Bay", on the reaction of the Vietnamese Americans living there, after the failure of the war.

Until that arrives "MILOU EN MAI", a metaphor for the state and the system, full of irony and black humor of the finest. Milou's mother, Mrs. Vieuzac, is representing the state: the owner of everything. Their children, grandchildren and sons-in-law, are the bourgeoisie, owners of power in the state. Claire, the maid, is the proletariat, the heir to only a quarter of the estate of Mrs. Vieuzac. The main prototypes come to life: the landowner, the reactionary intellectual, trader, bourgeois ladies...

With a delicious dialogue through participation in the old script by Luis Bunuel collaborator Jean Claude Carriere ("Now women complicated everything. Before they knew it was not an orgasm and it was easier"), a delightful musical score with the great jazz style of Stephane Grappelli, and beaten with that herd, Louis Malle reconstructs the warm and vibrant time of May 68', in which there was a social class who knew everything, understood everything and was consistent with everything... until that any solace to meddle in its liabilities.

In a wonderful characterization, Michel Piccoli represents Milou, the provincial intellectual who suddenly is surrounded by its unique family at the announcement of the death of his mother. When that nice breed, feel that the facts are about to touch them directly, they decide to leave the field (are excluded). What follows is better that you see it, you'll find people have probably already seen in your neighborhood or on your street and you'll realize, perhaps, that many things are not as they seem.

"MILOU EN MAI", is a piece of film hard to forget.

Erm... I feel a little embarrassed; I can't join in the praise for this film, which I found too long and too unfocused. Louis Malle seems to have thought that just following Michel Piccoli around the estate as he tends to the bees and catches crabs, among other duties, while Stéphane Grappelli plays his winsome harmonica was enough to keep us engrossed. The real story is what was going on in Paris and other large cities in May 1968 (it was quite dramatic, as I recall from my safe haven in North America).

The story is flimsy: Milou and his brother Georges along with Milou's daughter Camille and Georges's children Claire and Pierre-Alain gather to attend the funeral of Mme. Vieuzac and distribute the family goods. Claire and Camille have a lively argument about the heritage, which disturbs Milou. His life has been so tranquil up to now...

The actors are let loose to give us a succession of star moments. Piccoli has his scene with the crabs, Miou-Miou her dalliance with the lawyer (superb François Berléand), Bruno Carette shows up midway as the lusty truck driver, Paulette Dubost is included as a tribute to the generation of Renoir and Carné. Finally Dominique Blanc as Georges's lesbian daughter has the best moments: she plays a Debussy piece ferociously as she watches her girlfriend flirting with Pierre-Alain. You can practically see the smoke pouring out of the piano. She also tantalizes the trucker--and us--with her bare breasts.

I don't know which director did the best account of the events of 68; possibly Wexler with his Medium Cool. Malle has not carried us back to those frenzied days, but has given us a series of vignettes as a way to show off the talents of his cast.

I wonder why it is not better known? You would think it would be, it is a beautiful movie, maybe not among Malle's very best, but certainly very good. There's a bittersweet feeling and it is also quite funny, as when the sisters are fighting over which one the mother wanted to leave her jewelry to.

Michel Piccoli is one of my favorite actors, and all the other parts are well done too.

Plus, the setting and photography are so beautiful. Somewhere in the Gers I think. When Milou is walking through the vines with his elderly foreman, I drool.

Just the sort of small, beautiful, mellow, not too elaborate country house and vineyard I want for myself when I win the Loterie Nationale!

Milou en Mai finds the aging Louis Malle at his most wickedly wistful, directing mischievous set pieces and ultimately expressing nervous laughter at his own mortality. Made more in the traditions of British farce than the traditional French 'sophistication', in being set to the background of the 60's union unrest and student riots, the film keeps a subtle check on the ridiculous. Examining death, family relationships, marital relationships, extra-marital relationships and the different ways people perceive their lot in life, Milou en Mai has something for everyone: farcical comedy, beautiful cinematography, perceptive commentary, delightful anecdotes (I'm thinking of the opening bee-keeper scene and crab-catching in the river) and fantastic 'Hot Club de France' bowing and strumming. This film is one of my all time favourites - gentle, intelligent, sensitive fun - highly recommended.