Aime ton père

This movie is an extremely gripping story of family relations involving a famous father. Both Depardieus are wonderful but I was blown away by the performance of Sylvie Testud. She riveted me every moment that she was on the screen. The story focuses on Leo Shepherd (Gérard Depardieu)a famous writer on the verge of winning a Nobel prize and examines what life is like for those in the family where the father is the focus of international attention and adoration. Other family members are left to identify themselves relative to the father. While the focus of the film is on a famous father, the power children give their parents makes many of this film's story lines relevant to all.

In the country of France, the writer Leo Shepherd (Gérard Depardieu) lives with his daughter Virginia (Sylvie Testud), who organizes his life. When the Swedish Academy awards Leo with the Nobel Prize for Literature, his son Paul (Guillaume Depardieu) unsuccessfully tries to contact him by phone, but Virginia does not allow Paul to talk to his father. Leo decides to go to Stockholm driving his motorcycle, and Paul follows him by car trying to speak with Leo. While trying to escape from Paul, Leo evolves in an accident on the road with another bike, a car and a truck and Paul kidnaps his slightly injured father. The police commit a mistake in the identification of one of the victims of the accident and announce the death of Leo. Meanwhile, Paul forces his father to listen to him, and along their conversation, a resentful relationship from both sides is disclosed.

"Aime Ton Père" is a deceptive movie about the relationship of a dysfunctional family that goes nowhere. The unpleasant and pointless story begins with a terrible development of characters, and it seems that Virginia is married with the black-haired guy (probably Arthur) and has an affair with the strong guy. The troubled relationship of Paul and Leo has accusations, resentments and pain but there is no final message. Further, there is no explanation why Leo has not written for three years. The conclusion of this empty story is absolutely disappointing. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Meu Pai, Meu Filho" ("My Father, My Son")

There were some amazing performances in this movie, as, at times, it delved into interesting material about parenting and relationships with neglectful parents. However, each time when the characters started to dig deeper within themselves to reveal more, the movie interrupted the focus--often into rather irrelevant directions. This is probably because most people with emotional baggage attempt to confront the past but become scared and run from it. Despite this, I still wanted to see much more exploration between the father and son. In addition, I wanted to see more than just a one-dimensional performance by the daughter throughout all but the closing moments of the film (she always seemed intensely and disproportionately angry throughout the film). It was as if the movie was put into production before there was a chance to edit and do re-writes and smooth out all the details--especially the very end of the film that made very little sense. Overall, it's interesting and has moments but could have been better.

By the way, Gerard's real life son plays his son in the movie. He looked an awful lot like a French version of Julian Sands (the somewhat obscure English actor).

I'm not a big fan of Depardieu, but always felt he had good potential, so I gave this film a shot. Mostly a mistake. Depardieu Jr. has a long way to go before his lack of talent and obvious opportunist entry into the industry will be forgiven. The director's personal vendetta is irrelevant, since the story is universal, but this particular treatment wasn't bad. Just that really stupidly contrived ending! Why an eskimo "inner child"? Totally distracting, killing any afterglow the film's emotional tone had attempted to create. The costume and set design were either non-existent or inappropriate. And if one of the too many surreal glimpses of the ubiquitous and annoying inner child was shot incorrectly, do it over! Don't shoot the same glimpse from a different angle! What was Berger thinking? Definitely not a must see.

The high level of acting and the intensity of the performances raised the overall quality of the film. Though aspects of the film may have been somewhat unrealistic,it was certainly true to itself. I also believe that it just as easily relates to any father/son relationship (where there is an inability to get past ones self and their own feelings)as it does to a famous father/son relationship. As one of the other people who issued a comment "that the film was only a form of therapy for the director" I would say that almost any work of art that is deeply felt is in a sense a form of therapy for the artist. Hopefully the therapy helped. I certainly enjoyed it.