A Viagem de Meu Pai

The story is about an old man, Claude, who entered the stage where memory and reasoning fail. He is wealthy and lives in a very comfortable house where caregivers hired by Carole, his elder daughter, takes care of him. He has divorced years ago and insists that his ex-wife died, whereas, in fact, she is alive and married. Besides Carole, who manages his life and administrates all their assets, he had another daughter, younger than Carole, who use to live in Florida(US) and died in a car accident (in Florida), some years ago. As a consequence of the trauma that this accident caused to him, he refuses to be aware of this loss and thinks that his younger daughter is still alive and living very well in Florida. All Claude messy moves are taken with good humor, including the last one, when he escapes from the France region where he lives and takes an Air France flight to Florida to visit his younger daughter. The only tense scene in the film is when he reaches the house where his younger daughter use to live and discovers that she is no longer alive. At this moment, he enters in a kind of anguish crisis which is the only move which transmits anguish and not good humor. During the whole story, Carole refuses to put him in a elderly home. After this episode of Florida, she decides to put him in the elderly home, which is, by the way very comfortable. The film is a light and pleasant entertainment. Yet, it gave me the impression that old age is much more light for a wealthy person than otherwise.

Floride was Jean Rochefort last movie and is in a sense a tribute to him. He is of every scene. First half of the movie shows him mischevious, try-hard, filled with humour. Thus the tone of movie changes, we understand the changes his character follows and we see his touching, fragile side.

The movie without Rochefort would not hold, however the thematic of memory is well used and shows how it is essential, to ourselves, to our relationship with others, and even to the image we can have of people that already left this wolrd.