My Afternoons with Margueritte Blu-ray Review
The Reader.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, July 6, 2012
Oh, my. Before he made headlines a few days ago for officially coming out of the closet, Anderson Cooper had created
a bit of another sensation with a giggling fit from his CNN news show which went viral on
YouTube. Cooper had a heck of a time trying to keep a straight face, not to mention trying not to
dissolve into helpless laughing, reading a pun filled rant against Gérard Depardieu, the iconic Academy Award
nominated actor who had gotten an additional fifteen minutes of infamy when he (how to put this delicately?) relieved
himself in public, on an airplane, no less. In a case of Art imitating Life, a scene in
My Afternoons with
Margueritte contains a scene of someone (how to put this delicately?) relieving himself in public, as Depardieu's
character Germain looks on, aghast. Seemingly since the time movies began, press agents have used the gambit that
their star charges were only "researching a role" when they do all sorts of stupid things, but evidently since
My
Afternoons with Margueritte had already wrapped when this incident occurred (and Depardieu was playing the
public "reliever" anyway), there never seemed to be any connection linking Depardieu's odd choice of a restroom with
this similarly odd little moment in what is otherwise a kind of quiet character study that has Art House written all over it
it (hopefully
not in—and there is no way to put this delicately—pee). Depardieu's Germain is a brute of a man, a
large, lumbering jack of all trades whose
upbringing included a harridan mother who never tired of telling her son what an abject failure he was, something
Germain seems to have taken to heart and realized as an adult. When he meets the elderly and patrician Margueritte
(Gisèle Casadesus) in an idyllic park, his life begins to change for the better when the old woman opens an unexpected
portal to Germain's shrouded mind: literature.
My Afternoons with Margueritte wants to be a feel good flick clad in typical Art House garb, but it's a rather
turgid
downer for much of its relatively brief running time, as Germain's abusive past keeps poking its head into the main
Germain-Margueritte storyline via a series of interrupting flashbacks. Germain is shown to have endured all sorts of
horrors growing up, whether it be from his hideous mother or (perhaps even more disturbingly in a way) one of his
teachers, who seems to delight in embarrassing the young boy in front of his classmates. Playing against this
relentless
litany of sadness is the growing affection between Margueritte and Germain, a relationship which hopefully will
establish
some much needed self-confidence and self-esteem in the manchild.
The film's original title of
La tête en friche might be charitably translated as "an uncultivated mind", and while
Margueritte's attempts to instill some culture into Germain are commendable, one might wonder why she starts that
process with Albert Camus'
The Plague, of all things. As she reads Camus' tale of death and destruction,
Germain's overly visual imagination comes to life, and director Jean Becker suddenly interrupts his scenic valentine to
the
splendors of the sylvan French countryside with cutaways to footage of hordes of dead rats being dumped into garbage
cans. It's an unsettling image, and one which seriously upends the film's quieter
ethos.
My Afternoons with Margueritte is incredibly scenic, continuing Becker's love affair with rural France. But
dramatically the film sputters a time or two, probably never moreso than in its depiction of Germain's hideous mother,
who is shown in one scene after another to be nothing less than despicable. And then in a supposedly stunning
denouement, it's revealed that she wasn't actually all
that bad, but in this case the revelation is simply too little,
too late and doesn't quite feel real as a result.
Depardieu was once a matinee idol of sorts, a strapping young actor with Gallic good looks and charm, but his physical
appearance has devolved so much lately that they may need to invent a new ultrawide aspect ratio simply to be able to
catch the actor's immense girth in the frame. His increasing obesity makes any attempt to pass him off as a romantic
lead harder and harder, and yet against all odds (and especially with regard to this somewhat oafish character), he's
given not just a girlfriend in
My Afternoons with Margueritte, but a young lass probably half (maybe even a third)
of his age, played winsomely by Sophie Guillemin. As kind of smarmy as this all is, it actually plays better than might be
expected, due largely to Guillemin's unassuming flair with the material. There's something very natural and heartfelt
here which helps the material rise above what might be unseemly otherwise.
In a very real way, though, the actual love story here is between Germain and Margueritte (with an age disparity on the
opposite side of things, as it were). Margueritte recognizes something nascent in Germain, despite his boorishness,
and likewise Germain finds himself opening up to the elderly woman in a way his background and upbringing have
never allowed him to before. There's a fairly predictable arc here, with Margueritte attempting to shepherd Germain
through the expected traumas of learning to read better and improve his vocabulary, and then a brief pass into outright
melodrama when Margueritte reveals she's suffering from macular degeneration and will soon be blind. It doesn't
exactly take a rocket scientist to figure out where
My Afternoons with Margueritte is going, and even with an
unnecessary tangent that sees Margueritte shuttled off to a care facility, the going is by and large emotionally involving
and even uplifting.
My Afternoons with Margueritte Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
My Afternoons with Margueritte has all the hallmarks of a—well—a Hallmark made for television movie, albeit one
unusually brutal in its depiction of the sad childhood of Germain. In fact it's in these melodramatic elements that the story
seems to come at least partially undone, for the rest of the film is an understated and quietly affecting story of two lonely
souls reaching out for each other and finding common ground. Even some of the melodramatic elements are compromised,
as when Germain's mother is revealed not to be a total villainess, a revelation which just seems half hearted after all the
sturm und drang that has gone before.
My Afternoons with Margueritte does have several saving graces,
however. Depardieu and Casadesus are marvelous together, and Guillemin makes an appealing, if incredibly unlikely,
romantic foil for Depardieu. And the film is just filled to the brim with lovely shots of a pastoral, rural France that almost
seem to breathe with a Gallic calm. This isn't a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination, but it's an engaging one and
should be enjoyed by those who like their Art House fare with a bit of a French accent. This Blu-ray offers excellent video
and audio, and even without any supplements to speak of, it comes
Recommended.
