DVD Review: Jean de Florette review
When Claude Berri passed away in January last year, the venerable Cannes Film Festival president Gilles Jacob rightly said that ‘˜French cinema is now an orphan'. Director-actor-producer-writer Berri hit international success with Jean de Florette, a sweeping tragedy and its sequel Manon des Sources establishing Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Béart as international stars.
Winner of a number of international awards and based on a Marcel Pagnol story, this is the tale of greed, failed dreams and relationships set in southeast France in the mid 1920s.
With a stunning performance by Depardieu, this film could be the story of any farmer anywhere in the world whose attachment to his native soil is a virtually unbreakable. An epical film that will be cherished by all lovers of powerful cinema at its best.
Apart from being a powerful film, it also served as a popular tourist promotion tool, though inadvertently, as the Provence region of France became a hugely popular destination particularly among British tourists thanks to its success overseas.
Both this and its sequel Manon des Sources have an interesting background to them. Pagnol had first made the film in 1953 with the second title, but its four-hour length made its producers so uncomfotable that they cut it. Pagnol then converted the story into a novel, which Berri stumbled upon in a hotel room later.
Jean De Florette's storyline is too well known among lovers of world cinema. It is about how a crafty and wealthy man in a small village wants to usurp a piece of land that has an underground spring in a region where water is scarce. After the original owner of the land dies, Cesar, the man in question, hopes to own it, but unexpectedly, an outsider named Jean Cadoret, played brilliantly by Depardieu, inherits it, putting a spanner in Cesar's plans. He, along with his crooked nephew, sabotage Jean's work, leading to tragic consequences.
A bonus feature is "Tuesday", a short film by Vishal Gandhi, a student of Whistling Woods International film school of Subhash Ghai.
Jean de Florette (France, 1986); French with English & Hindi subtitles; Shemaroo World Cinema ; Rs 349
Comments( 3 )
Excellent review here
Excellent review here Bikas.
>> With a stunning performance by
>> With a stunning performance by Depardieu, this film could be the story of any farmer anywhere in the world whose attachment to his native soil is a virtually unbreakable. <<
The whole film's tragedy is that it's about someone who is NOT a farmer!! Did you see the film?
@ Ankur: Of course Jean is not a
@ Ankur: Of course Jean is not a farmer, but a tax collector who is trying to become a farmer. The sentence says that it could be the story of any farmer's attachment to his native soil, and Jean's character also toils because he is attached to the land he inherited. Apologise if it conveyed a meaning to the contrary because of the juxtaposition with the comment on Depardieu's performance.