Marius e Jeannette

Maybe, the simplicity is the main virtue of this film mixing nostalgia, slices of ordinary lives, fair humor, serious problems, motherhood, romance, loneliness, addictions and honest perspectives about neighbors, their common existence, religion, sexual life, boyfriends and dreams of children, God and lies.

Short, a film for love it.

For acting, dialogues, atmosphere, narrator voice and something profound moving, escaping by definitions.

This film is how life should be portrayed. Those raised on a diet of Hollywood love stories where everyone has a new car, large house and unfeasibly white teeth will find this slice of Gallic realism a bit overpowering. Those of us who prefer our cinema with a bit of bite can appreciate the predicament the two leading characters are in and we can rally for them. A honest heartwarming film that moves at a slow pace (but then who meets a girl, falls in love, befriends her children and lives happily ever after in 97 minutes. I was lucky enough to buy this as a withdrawn VHS from my local library and I prize it as one of the 'top drawer' films in my film collection.

Set in the low economy end of Marrseilles, where a courtyard is shared by a few surrounding town houses. The main thrust of the story comes from the romance between a mother of two, Jeanette, and the security guard with a limp(!), Maruis. From them branches the relationship and friendship of the neighbours, all with their hang-ups and humour.

This movie is for those who want to believe that life can be pleasant even if one is a broke divorced unemployed mother of two without prospects as long as one believes. In this case the requisite belief is not in god or in life everlasting but in love & some communitarian evolution of romanticized communism. Our once deserted and once widowed unemployed heroine finds love amongst the deconstructing ruins of a cement factory with its emotionally and "physically" crippled security guard. The film is not unrelieved tendentious reality though the only action is a rather bloody bar room brawl from which the protagonists escape drunk but without injury. The one great myth that deserves debunking is that a dozen people in a third of a dozen seperate households can live cheek by jowl in a fading tenement, sharing all intimacies and still like each other. I was somewhat mean in giving it a 6 but it sure isn't worth the 8.7 average rating that prompted me to see it. The French must have different eyes.

I'm not sure why this movie garnered such hostile reviews on here. I gather it was assigned in some class and that the students did not like it. I also gather that it was presented with a Marxist perspective, which is unfortunate.

This movie doesn't have much in the way of social commentary. It is the unremarkable story of a group of individuals in a poor neighborhood in Marseilles. They are all basically likable, which works for awhile. By the second half of the movie, though, there don't seem to be enough ideas to justify going on. The ending seems like a made-for-TV movie.

Not a movie worth going out of your way for. Pleasant, but, I suspect, at least for me, almost instantly forgettable.