....that saved a wretch like me!
Actually not really that;Antoine is a lawyer ,his wife a physician and they are not exactly the average French family. A spate of clichés,a bore to end all bores:an ambitious suspicious wife, a grumpy father -the great Jean-Luc Bideau is given lines the average viewer has heard a hundred times or more-,a brother who represents the black sheep of the family,or should I say the biblical prodigal son,a sister who needs shrinks -where would she be without them?- ,and a son who's got (very minor) problems at school to boot.
The main originality of this hackneyed subject is Antoine's return to faith (he was brought up religiously and his sister remembers how they used to pray when they were kids :"you were on the verge of tears afterward and I would take you in my arms and console you".That this man ,who has everything (his father tells him so) ,looks for the meaning of his life is quite legitimate .However ,his line of thought is not really convincing:"now I'm conscious of my weakness" he says but he did feel it since the beginning (with the exception of the first sequence): in front of his relatives ,he felt naked without his robe ,well before he was inspired .Whoever he met, he was self-conscious and embarrassed and did not know how to communicate with them.The "Sunday school" scenes remain superficial and recall those of the Alcoholics Anonymous. It was a very interesting subject,but it's only skimmed over.
Like this? Try these.....
"Europa 51",Roberto Rossellini ,1952
"Teorema",Pier Paolo Pasolini,1968.
