La tête en friche

I thought that Becker's "Dialogue avec mon jardinier" was an excellent film; but watching "La tête en friche", I think this is his master work.

Depardieu is "the" actor in the current French movie scene and I can't imagine anyone other in the role of Germain Chazes. But the film lives by the art of both protagonists: Gisèle Casadesus and Gérard Depardieu. It is hard to imagine a greater contrast than the well educated lady on the one hand and the proletarian worker who had the worst start in life one can imagine, on the other hand.

It is a very old subject which was already treated in 1668 by the novel of Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen "Simplicius Simplicissimus" where a very simple person, a shepherd, by education and learning makes career as an army officer. Nothing other is demonstrated in this movie: A simple boy (shown in the flash backs) who never had a chance to become an educated person, gets the chance to learn due to the caring of an old lady and becomes all of a sudden a different person.

He notices the the problems of his surrounding and even understands his mother in the end - who always treated him mean during her lifetime.

This is a very moving film which gives hope that people and persons can be changed in their behavior by much love and understanding of their surroundings.

An excellent performance of Gisèle Casadesus (at the age of 96 years!) and Gérard Depardieu.

I voted 10 of 10 points.

One of the greatest performance of French actor Gerard Depardieu lately. After the more somber and underground art film Mammuth, were you recognize somewhat the frees spirited Depardieu of the cult movie "Les Valseuses" (1974), here comes an unexpected tender and touching story of an adult that can barely read and an elderly lady from a retirement home. A love story begins, her love of words and books drives his desire to finally learn to "travel with words" and their love for each other blossoms. The director is know for his love of the human kind, undeserved as it may be, he glorifies the good one can do to another human being. It is a refreshing film, not a dark satire of society, but a joyful, hopeful, moving story with a true happy end. Don't miss it !

This is a thoroughly enjoyable movie. The story of a middle-aged man who can barely read, and doesn't enjoy it, and as a result has only odd jobs that pay little. He lives in an old trailer home in his mother's back yard, because that is all he can afford.

Then one day he meets a frail, elderly woman, who charms him by her very differences: she is a retired scientist, a highly educated and cultured woman, who has a passion for literature, which she loves to read out loud. He allows her to read to him, and becomes hooked by some great literature. It opens whole new worlds to him, and changes his life for the better. It also gives him the desire to really know how to read, and he sets about learning to do so, despite all the shame that involves for an adult man.

I liked this movie so much that I read the book on which it was based afterward. The novel, with the same title, is if anything even better than the movie. The end of the movie seems a little rushed, whereas the end of the book makes complete sense and is, I found, more satisfying.

Still, this is one very fine movie, with two great performances, by Depardieu and Gaby Casadeseus. It makes you feel good, without the mush that typifies what in the U.S. are called "feel good" movies. It would be interesting to see a good American director adapt it for American audiences.

A film like Jean Becker's My Afternoons with Margueritte spoils me with a lyricism found not just in a small French provincial town filled with eccentric, lovable characters but also in sentiment propelled by exquisite words found in Camus and Romain Gary. And an odd couple who find love that is sometimes not named.

In perhaps a nod to Harold and Maude, Germain (Gerard Depardieu), a 50 year old non reader, meets in the park with 90 year old Margueritte (Gisele Casadesus), who initially reads to him from Camus' The Plague. As she awakens his interest in reading, his life changes, not the least of which is finding a loving mother figure for the abusive real one. Or maybe discovering Leonard Cohen's Suzanne.

So much more is layered in this romantic story: a Cheers-like café where love and disrespect, the two poles of sentiment in the film, play out in a way that exalts the affection even in the hardest of relationships; a traditional love affair for Germain with the younger Francine (Maurane) that may turn around the story's primary January-May motif but parallels it in the deeply loving relationship that seeks to perpetuate itself.

So much of My Afternoons is about renewal and rebirth, and so little is about death that the formula for too old to be young no longer applies. Nor does my expectation to be grossed out by Depardieu's enormous girth, a sad counterpoint to his dashing younger days. But wait, his weight is perfect for the role, his lines read with such understated beauty as to shout, "Where have you been, Gerard?" The bear-like man revealing a daisy-like affect is poetically perfect for the story.

If you expect the film to follow a formula, you will be correct, except maybe for the ending which confirms the motif of unnamed love conquering all. Actually, the film makes you cry for more of the odd-couple romantic formula.

As for the transforming power of books, Abe Lincoln had a witty take on the subject: "The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read." Change that to "woman" and you have My Afternoons with Margueritte.

A man (not so young) and a woman (very old) on a bench (the standard model), a few pigeons and few books, such are the basic ingredients of "La Tête en Friche". Not much in terms of dramatic backbone, but more than it takes for Jean Becker to make one of these heart-warming movies of which he has had the secret since "Les enfants du marais" (1995).

Little-known novelist Marie-Sabine Roger has provided the director, well assisted by the veteran scriptwriter Jean-Loup Dabadie, with typical Jean Becker material : the place of the action set somewhere in the French provinces (in this case, a village in the South-West of France), ordinary people as heroes (in "La tête en friche", a local Forrest Gump-like jack of all trades, a delicious 94-year-old lady who lives in an old people's home and a bunch colorful village people) as well as a lot of heart.

It is hard indeed to remain insensitive to the two leading characters, to the birth and development of a deep friendship between them, all the more as they are embodied to perfection by two wonderful actors, bulky Gérard Depardieu (a John Blunt who, against all odds, discovers the virtues of reading) and frail Gisèle Casadesus (as his unexpected Pygmalion). The two performers form an odd but touching couple that very few audience members can resist.

Funny and touching, light but not superficial, "La tête en friche" affords the luxury of examining, without depressing the viewer, such serious subjects as illiteracy, the status of the elderly in our society, the nearness of death, the aftermath of a difficult childhood...

The only thing that could be blamed on the authors is their giving Germain (Depardieu) a young mate. It is not Sophie Guillemin's fault at all : she is marvelous in the role. Fresh, natural, even solar. She is perfect but... twice as young as her partner. Not very believable, I am afraid.

But this is only a minor shortcoming. As a whole, "La Tête en friche" is an intelligent, sensitive and enjoyable film. One more achievement for Jean Becker.