Aime ton père

"A Loving Father" tells of a writer who is en route to pick up his Nobel prize when his trip is interrupted by an estranged son. This road trip flick focuses on the real life father/son Depardieu duo as it meanders through a spotty mire of family dysfunction issues. The sometimes engaging story is fraught with moments of implausibility, a seemingly concocted conclusion, and a trite moral which seems to be "Love your children because payback's a bitch". With good quality in all aspects except story, "A Loving Father" has been largely ignored by the critics and received only a few fringe awards with nominal plaudits from the public. Only for fans of the players or French cinema. (B-)

I must begin by emphasizing that the English title of this film is completely inappropriate. The correct translation of the French title is the imperative- Love Your Father.I think this fact is very key in the director's intention, as the story is really about that construct and not that of the erroneous The Loving Father.

I rarely feel so differently from other IMDb posters as I apparently do on this film. For me, Love Your Father was very realistic in its portrayal of all of the characters and their interactions.The messiness of it all, the many unanswered questions of motivation and action,history and future, were all part of a very realistic believable picture of a highly dysfunctional family.I suspected that the end would not clean up the mess,and it did not. However, I did think that the ferry and Nobel scenes showed that the brother and sister had finally really understood and accepted that they would never get what they had always wanted, and they could move forward as adults.As unexplained as it was, the very end gave me an interpretation of the future for the main character,cleanly echoed in the overlaid words of the Nobel recitation.So I did experience closure.

What I took away from the film is that great artists create and give great art to the world; they are driven to do this; it is not a rational or controllable decision for them. At the same time, they are often incapable of giving great things anywhere else in their lives.Almost invariably , they cannot give friends and family the love those people crave and deserve. So the 'loved ones' suffer immensely. Many other films and books have shown this irony; I thought Love Your Father did a terrific job of exposing it.

A Loving Father is a difficult movie to watch for obvious reasons. While in most of their movies together, father and son Gérard and Guillaume Depardieu play older and younger versions of each other, in this movie they play a father and son with a bad relationship. At the time of its release, it might have been worth it to see good acting and hope the characters onscreen, a successful father and a son who can't measure up, could help them reconcile their relationship offscreen. Now, it's very sad to watch, if you're able to get through it. It just hits a little too close to home, as hurt and frustration radiates off both of them constantly.

Gérard is a Nobel Prize recipient who gets involved in a motorcycle accident while on the way to Stockholm. His estranged son discovers the accident and, after calling the French equivalent of 911, tucks his dad into his car and drives away. They hear on the radio that Gérard's wallet was discovered and he's presumed dead, and Guillaume takes advantage of the opportunity to have a father-son chat and hopefully fix their issues.

See what I mean about not being able to get through the movie? If you were able to watch Whitney Houston in Sparkle, I guess you'll be able to watch the Depardieus in A Loving Father. Just keep in mind that it's very sad. There are some other scenes with Sylvie Testud, Gérard's daughter, who has her own anger issues about her brother and her father, so you will have a break from time to time. If you don't even know what I'm talking about, then you'll be fine and you'll see some very good acting.

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.

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.