Tatie Danielle

A slight, eventually monotonous fable that is frequently very very funny. Its use of the medium may be rudimentary, and its general conceit - an old woman is a real pain to her family - hardly complex, but there is a real pleasure in seeing sheer, unwarranted nastiness in action. Tatie Danielle is the kind of wearingly negative OAP we all hope we'll grow up into.

The movie starts with Danielle being generally unpleasant to her equally elderly servant-companion, Odile, in a monstrous parody of the Barbie/Mabel relationship in THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN. They share a large house outside Paris - Odile doing all the chores to a chorus of ingratitude and hostility; Danielle accusing her of senility and thieving . A short visit from her nephew, Jean-Pierre's family, inspires in Danielle the desire to live with them in Paris, and fortuitously (or is it?) Odile meets with a fatal accident cleaning the chandelier on a rickety chair. Danielle sells her house, shares the money with her nephew and spinster niece, Jeanne, to ensure moving in with the former.

Here, she is an absolute horror, refusing to eat at dinner, insulting Jean-Pierre's wife, Catherine's cooking and looks, kicking the dog, deliberately losing the youngest child in the park. The family refuse to believe she is mean because of her financial generosity, but the barrage begins to wear. Just before they intend to holiday in Greece, with Danielle staying with Jeanne, the latter is dumped by her boyfriend when she announces her pregnancy; Jean-Pierre suggests she accompany them: a helper must be found for Danielle.

Outraged, Danielle ups her offensive. She begins to overeat to get sick, and throws water on the bed, feigning wetting. In a brilliantly farcical sequence, she disrupts her nephew's dinner with friends by turning on the TV at a blaring volume, begging for food and visibly defecating in her nightie. Eventually the family find a minder, Sandrine, and set off. But Sandrine refuses to take any nonsense, and after a power struggle and touching thawing , leaves Danielle to spend a last night with her American boyfriend. Left alone, Danielle deteriorates, lets the apartment go to pot, and sets it on fire. A national outrage ensues over this perceived abandonment and Danielle becomes a celebrity, while the family are taken to court for negligence. Her fraud is revealed, though, and she ends up in an old folks' home...

TATIE is very reminiscent of Renoir's masterpiece BOUDU SAUVE DES EAUX, in which a tramp rescued by a kindly bourgeois wreaks havoc on his benefactor. Danielle, for all her unpleasantness, is a subversive presence, disrupting complacent bourgeois domesticity, telling hard truths. The family aren't vile money-grabbers, and despite some grotesqueness, are an essentially decent lot. They are the new France, boasting shiny apartments with all mod cons, and bright colour schemes, tolerant liberal attitudes (one son is a gay dancer), dinner parties, trips to Greece. Their only crimes are pretentiousness, homogeneity (note the similarity of their names), and self satisfaction, but they are hardly Bunuellian monsters.

Danielle is the France they'd like to forget, reminder of a colonialist and collaborationist past. Her childlessness is linked to sterility and the pinched nature of her character; her husband died 50 years ago, just before the Fall of France? He is a seeming image of French glory and military prowess undermined by his comic looks. She is a past that refuses to be suppressed and her power reveals the fragility and superficiality of bright, modern, consumerist France, how easily it can descend into chaos and fragmentation. Catherine becomes a bag of nerves, Jean-Pierre convenes Mafia-like meetings to discuss family crises.

TATIE is very brave in never selling out on the character of Danielle, who, in Hollywood, would surely be reduced to mush. There is as much ridicule as pathos in her conversation with her dead husband, and her growing affection for the only character who won't cow before her is disabled by a lack of human sympathy and insight. We love Danielle precisely because she is so unbearable, a vile Id that cannot be swept away.

Tsilla Chelton's sublime performance, a mixture of evil, moroseness, regret and childish mischief, keeps the film watchable, although by the end one has probably had enough. The coda is delightful, though, rejecting cosy ideas of moral regeneracy. The style is more subtle than it first appears, with its plays of light and space serving to suffocate Danielle in her environment, and there are some pleasant, if conventionally mild, surreal long shots, involving an adorable, soon-to-be-betrayed dog.

A film like "Tatie Danielle" is a welcome departure from the formula comedy-dramas out there focusing on the elderly members of our society. We're not dealing with another "Who will take care of Grandma" story, but are confronted with a real problem: This old lady is NOT the dear little Granny we know from story books. She isn't the type anyone would hate to ship off to a nursing home. She's the devil in disguise of a sweet old woman, who manipulates people around her to cause general unpleasantness.

In frequent moments of talking to herself (or rather her long-departed husband), Tatie Danielle fills us in on the "big picture". Apparently this woman has never worked or cared for herself. The widow of a high ranking military officer, living comfortably on a handsome pension, the old woman makes it her mission to terrorize anyone she encounters. The scene where a dear friend of many years dies because of Danielle's unreasonable demands to perform ridiculous cleaning chores shows the utter lack of compassion this woman has. Later she is party to abandoning an old family dog, more evidence of the cruelty within her.

Despite the roller-coaster ride of mean and spiteful behavior from an ungrateful, chronic malcontent, this film has many reflective moments, as well as a lot of good laughs. If you're put off by "Auntie Danielle's" mean cruelties, stick it out, because there is a big pay-off in the end, as well as a captivating story leading there. Not for everyone's taste, but certainly an excellent piece of International Cinema! The English subtitles are very efficient, giving just enough of the original French dialog to "translate" the meaning. Poor subtitles can spoil a foreign film, but an excellent job was done here!

You have probably read the others viewers comments and you know that this woman Tatie Danielle is very very bad. But I think she's worst than that! In 99 % of the movies, old women are funny, or touching. Not desperados or delinquent. But Tatie is. Or worst... Despite that, this movie is also very sarcastic about middle class families, and a certain way of life. This is truly very unique, a real mastepiece of black humor. One of my favorite comic movie of all time. Let's hope Hollywood will never make a remake.

Tatie Danielle is one of the most gaspingly unpleasant films I've seen for a long time. It's 100% cynical, negative and meanspirited.

Auntie Danielle is the most callous old bag I have ever clapped eyes on. Seizing on everything her long-suffering family does to help her, and turning it inside out, she is a great example of the constant victim. Never happier than when whinging, she's a spiteful bully, and is heartless in the extreme. When she finally meets her match, the film is turned completely upside-down, which is nice to see.

I laughed lots, needless to say.

Don't miss this film: it's unique.

This should be a cult film for those with mean elderly relatives. We have recommended this to folks with hypercritical mothers, mothers-in-law, and others, who also said "She's mean." And nobody else believes them, because the relative can be just so nice to others. we've seen the little smirk that comes across her face when she makes somebody else suffer. She is also willing to suffer herself, if it means others suffer even more.

This film rings so true that it must have been based somebody's actual experience. Packaging family angst as a comedy probably wouldn't sell in Hollywood, so we have to pick this up from the French.

Cinematically, it's better than average, with notable performances from Tati and her niece and nephew.

It's charming and amusing to boot.