Malabar Princess

... which, in this case, is a collective noun I've seen fit to coin. It will be a great pity if this delightful entry doesn't make it out of France - why, when it has been playing in Paris for at least a couple of weeks it is still classed as being in the Cutting Room is beyond me. Jacques Villeret with a moustache yet for once plays it relatively straight, the normally drop-dead gorgeous Michelle Laroque plays down her usual vivaciousness to play, would you believe, a school marm buried in a tiny hamlet high in the mountains, and oh, yes, there's a kid, a Straw-Hat circuit low-budget Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn fish-out-of-water along to create low-key havoc. Charm is good to describe this entry shot on location at altitudes where you can all but TASTE the crispness in the air and as a realistic antidote to the Heidi-like idyll realism rears its nasty head in a scene where a dead farm horse is unceremoniously carted off on the back of a wagon to the knacker's yard or - we are, after all in France - to a one-star Michelin restaurant. For the record - if not for the curious - Malabar Princess is the name of an airplane that crashed in the area just before the first day of shooting. A great feel-good entry. 8/10

Jacques Villeret is the best actor in the world, period.

Although his "Gaspard" (no surname) is similar to his "Jojo Braconnier" in "Un crime au Paradis", he never grows weary, nor do we. Such honesty is rare.

The film's plot is trite. Its development could be less melodramatic but. I didn't complete like Tom, the protagonist, but he's good at making and unbearably stubborn child not be hateable, but to understand his mourning and flights to fantasy (he's no angel, make no mistake). Claude Brasseur makes an eerily similar character to his superb role in "camping". Again, he's a man who loves cars, money and stereotypes a bit too much :), but he carries it off like if he was born for the role.

Clovis Cornillac is a young father who could be more convincing, but that's the story's fault, who shows him making completely different choices in the beginning and the end.

As usual with French films, the "country and the city" subplot is like a river, always full of energy. From the difference in vocabulary and "useful knowledge" to the way to educate/discipline children and treat women, all is different, and yet, as we're in a comedy of sorts, all is happily solved within a few minutes.

The technical aspects are fine. You feel the mountain, the cold, and the piano theme is perfect for the action. Not too romantic, but with feelings.

Nice for a Saturday evening.

A little child (Tom: I am not your child) lost his mother when he was young. Five years passed, his father brought he back to that place(grandfather's home). He use any way to find the body of his mother that he can. The interaction, children's thoughts and adults' thoughts can be found in this movie. This movie didn't make me bored, there are many funny things during the whole movie. Tom found many information and things about his mother step by step. Because no one tell him what happened to his mother or they just can't. Eventually, he knew the whole story. When he and his grandfather talked about his mother's death(or missing), it seems there is a final hope to find his mother(body?) in his heart. Adults always consider and evaluate many conditions and situations. What should I do? what shouldn't? What results will be caused? Children don't do these too much. Children just simply want (to do) something!

I thought this was a beautiful movie. The movie is set in a picturesque alpine village where life seems so much simpler than in a modern Australian city. It was nice to "escape" for an hour and a half.

An 8 year old boy, Tom, is taken by his father to stay with his grandfather (who he does not know) for a while. The boy is at first reluctant to stay with his grandfather, but over the course of the movie the affection between the two grows. The boy's mother disappeared in the Alps five years previously, and the boy seems obsessed with finding out more about the circumstances of her disappearance. Is she dead? Could she still be alive?

Tom goes to school in the village, and makes friends with an older boy. They have adventures together as Tom tries to work out ways to get higher in the Alps to look for his lost mother.

The movie ends on a positive note, with a reconciliation between the boy and his distant father.

Jacques Villeret delivers a wonderful performance in this charming, tender film, one of his best roles ever, only a year or so before he died. The young fellow (Jules-Angelo) is very good too, and supporting actors like Claude Brasseur and Michele Laroque are excellent too.

The story is about a young boy whose mother died in the glacier in mysterious circumstances five years before the film starts. At the age of 8, staying with his grand father, he is haunted by the questions about his mum "disappearing" in the mountain, "lost", words that mean to him that she may somehow still be alive.

Because grown-ups lied to him thinking he was too young to understand, at the age of 8 he starts to understand the meaning of the word "Death" but has not made the psychological journey to accept it was the fate of his mum.

It is with a new relationship with his grand father, that is, his link with his lost mother, and a journey back where she lived for the last time that he will be able to grow.

A real event is the background for the story, the wreck of the an Indian aircraft, the Malabar Princess in the French Alps in 1950.

Bought it on DVD recently. What a pity a film like this did not receive a wider audience.