For lovers of classical French cinema, and I am one, this earthy throwback is a whiff of lavender borne by the bracing winds of the mistral.
Daniel Auteuil stars and makes a very competent directing debut with this handsome, old-fashioned film, adapted from the novel by Marcel Pagnol. It’s a bucolic tale, set around the second world war, which must surely remind his fans of the movies that made his name in the UK: the 1986 dramas Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. Auteuil plays Pascal, a digger and cleaner of wells: he is a greying widower and the father of a number of daughters. The most beautiful of these is the 18-year-old Patricia who is being by Pascal’s heartbreakingly humble, middle-aged mate Félipe. But she, like Hardy’s Tess, is to be romanced and ruined by a handsome, unreliable young man from wealthier stock. This is Jacques, whose parents are the upwardly mobile bourgeois owners of the local store. You will need a slightly sweet tooth for this movie, as the ending is a little saccharine – but it is well made and well acted throughout. Auteuil’s own performance, taking Pascal from fatherly indulgence to dignity in the face of adversity, and then to cold anger, is very well managed, as are the interactions of Jacques parents Patricia and Jacques.
