3/10
If your idea of a good night out is watching an overweight middle-aged man sit on a park bench talking to an old lady about pigeons and Camus, with a background of assorted stereotyped French characters and endless flashbacks of an unloved childhood, then this will be your tasse de the. But not mine.
In fact, I hated this film from the moment it started. I didn't believe a single word of the whole frothy sentimental bucket of slop, which makes Driving Miss Daisy look bold and original. Where to start? Well, there's the fact that 62 year old Germain (Gerard Depardieu whose Central is very Massif), despite living in a trailer, being treated like an idiot by his mother (who looks about 5 years older than him), and having no discernible regular employment apart from being a good egg, still manages to have an attractive girlfriend half his age who adores him. You wish.
Another problem is the repeated use of flashbacks to show a stolid-looking young Germain being bullied by his teacher at school, mocked and abused by his mother and generally being put upon. We get the point after the first scene, and after the twentieth, the point has been buried deep into our brains, where it's causing some discomfort. Then there's the whole literary education aspect of things. So this genteel old lady who lives in an old people's home, walks to town every day to read Camus to this hulking pigeon-lover. Excuse my sharp intake of breath. The trouble is that the film simply presents everything to us as a given. Germain is a nice bloke, because everyone says he is; he and his girlfriend are in love, because they tell us they are; Margueritte wants to educate his mind because he likes pigeons. It's just not enough to cram the screen with characters that would be grateful if you said they were 2 dimensional and offer it as a slice of provincial French life. If this was an English film, it would laughed off the screen, but because it's in French, everyone treats it seriously.
But not me.
