Jean de Florette (1986)

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Directed by Claude Berri.

Starring Daniel Auteuil, Elisabeth Depardieu, Ernestine Mazurowna, Yves Montand, Gérard Depardieu.

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Co-adapted by director Claude Berri from a novel by Marcel Pagnol, this hugely successful French historical drama concerns a bizarre battle royale over a valuable natural spring in a remote French farming community. City dweller Jean Cadoret (Gérard Depardieu) assumes ownership of the spring when the original owner is accidentally killed by covetous farmer Cesar Soubeyran (Yves Montand). Soubeyran and his equally disreputable nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) pull every dirty trick in the book to force Cadoret off his land, but the novice farmer stands firm. Although the Soubeyrans appear to gain the upper hand, the audience is assured that they will eventually be foiled by the vengeful daughter of the spring's deceased owner -- thus setting the stage for the film's equally successful sequel, Manon of the Spring. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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Moroccan Pretty Woman
by quint in An inordinate number of peppers

liked it.

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"Here's my confession. I'm a sucker for all things Moroccan. I came to love Morocco via the stories of Paul Bowles. I once spilled a cup of coffee on the Paul Bowles shelf in a bookstore and got them all cheap, cheap. I love Paul Bowles. Herzog should do a Paul Bowles story. I love Moroccan music, especially the music of the Gnawa. I saw Hassan Hakmoun, one of it's finest touring practitioners (in my opinion) tear it up with some jazz musicians in Detroit last weekend. It was frikkin awesome. I'm not so much a fan of Burroughs' Morocco. I like stories about Aicha Kandisha, the succubus who lures unwary men to their demise in her bed. The men who become enslaved to her and work her will. It is very interesting to me to suppose a culture steeped in magic. I think the Morocco I dream of is perhaps still there. It is beneath everything the West can scrubbed off that scrap of desert. I wanted to see this right off and I'm glad I did. Although, i have to say, it ... " [More]

Review by All Movie Guide

All Movie Guide

liked it.

The plot of Jean de Florette is as melodramatic as any soap opera, but its treatment is just a little askew, just off-center enough for the film to evolve into a moving and powerful pastoral tragedy. The film is a naturalistic story about the dehumanizing effect of greed on a community and on the human soul. Watching the hunchbacked Jean de Florette (Gérard Depardieu) struggle against all odds to keep his small farm alive, maintaining to the bitter end his optimism and naïve faith in his reference books, is like watching Sisyphus make his daily toil up the hill. Only here, it is not the gods who have trapped the victim, but the xenophobia and covetousness of his neighbors. Director Claude Berri shoots the countryside in grand scope, dwarfing the human figures whose daily exertions hardly make a mark on it. As the story moves inexorably to its tragic conclusion, the wicked plotting of the simultaneously likable and vicious father (Yves Montand) and son (Daniel Auteuil) leaves the audience pleading for divine retribution. However, humans created this cruel world in Provence, and they will have to mete out their own justice. The sequel, Manon of the Spring, realizes this desire for revenge with perfectly poetic magnitude. Nominated for nine British Academy Awards (BAFTA) in 1988, Jean de Florette took home three awards. ~ Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide

Tags: french , Claude-Berri , full-circle , fantastic , foreign
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