Pai, Filhos & Etc

I saw this movie at the Toronto Film Festival because it starred the great actor Phillipe Noiret. It arrived with little fanfare, compared to a film like "The Barbarian Invasions," which it actually resembles. Well it turned out to be a great film, and actually better than "TBI" in that the relationships between the father and his sons were more clearly defined and developed in this film. It is touching and very funny at the same time. The film also makes some amusing digs at the French Canadians by French people from France! Anybody who sees this film will want to immediately call his or her father up if at all possible, wherever he may be, and tell him how much he is loved, for the film movingly shows the importance and uniqueness of fathers and of the power of reconciliation and forgiveness. The director in the Q & A said he wanted to simply make an entertaining film. What he has created is so much more than that!

This movie had everything to shine, but Boujenah did something I can't understand. He threw away the Quebec accent and replaced it by an accent so clean and polite that even the good family doesn't speak. He took what this population is so proud about like if it was a shame. This alone broke all the mood of the film. This movie could have been shot anywhere where people speak French and we would have never seen the difference. It's just like throwing away the French bread rod or stealing the monarchy from England...

This movie had everything to shine, but Boujenah did something I can't understand. He throws away the Quebec accent and replaced it by an accent so clean and polite that even the good family doesn't speak. I took what this population is so proud about like if it was a shame. This alone breaks all the mood of the film and this movie could have been shot anywhere where people speak French and we would have never seen the difference. It's just like throwing away the French bread rod or stealing the monarchy from England...

I lived in Paris for 2 months last year, and on my first day there this was the movie I chose to see by myself at the cinema, as an introduction to french films. And to improve my language skills! I have to say it was a great choice. Funny, even to me with my limited knowledge of French, heartwarming and a great plot, with talented actors and the right blend of sentiment and humour. I wished all my friends were there to see it, but of course none of them speak French. recommended for newcomers to French language movies! I just wish they brought it out on DVD with English subtitles so I could let everyone back home see it! Ten out of ten! Go buy it!

In case there are any academics/pseudo-intellectuals etc watching the first thing to say is that the title is not a direct translation from Turgenev, or even Hemingway. What we have here is a gentle comedy woven around our old friend the dysfunctional family. For better or worse this movie is going to be sold on top-billed Phillipe Noiret, arguably the best Italian (if we don't count Yves Montand) actor France has ever produced (witness his 'Aldo' in 'Cinema Paradiso') if not also the best South American (viz: his Pablo Neruda in 'Il Posto'). One of the old guard of French cinema - Michel Piccoli, Jean Louis Trintagnant, Michel Serrault - he couldn't turn in a bad performance if he tried so that just by turning up on the set he is going to save a bad script or enhance a good one. This is somewhere in between. Apart from Noiret none of the other principals means anything outside France and some of them are not even going to draw flies at the domestic box office. That aside this is a fairly decent effort and as good a way as any to beguile an hour or so. Patriarch Noiret, like Adam, has three sons, the anal-retentive businessman, the loser and the ho-hum, to say nothing of a doctor brother, who kick-starts what plot there is. In the wake of a health scare and some tv documentary footage featuring whales, Noiret contrives to unite the family via a trip to Montreal combining a whale hunt. The results are predictable but nevertheless enjoyable, laffs, tears, trauma plus a cutesie 'did he or didn't he see it' wrap shot. See it if you're a father, a son, or even a transvestite nun.