Belle et Sébastien (2013)
Directed by Nicolas Vanier

Film Review

Fifty years on from its first airing in France, the classic children's television series Belle et Sébastien (created by the actress turned writer Cécile Aubry) gets a big budget reboot in this lavish period drama - a nostalgia trip for fans of the original series but a tad schmaltzy for your average mainstream cinema audience.  As Christophe Barratier had previously done with his 'modern' reworking of Yves Robert's La Guerre des boutons, the original concept is shifted back from 1960s France to the Second World War, at the time of the Nazi Occupation, and so we get another overly generous dose of worn-to-death clichés doused in a thick treacle of kitsch sentimentality.  With its incredible plot and barely credible performances, Belle et Sébastien would be an easy film to boycott were it not for the sheer artistry with which its is crafted - its location photography is simply stunning.

The film's director, Nicolas Vanier, earned his reputation as a wildlife documentary filmmaker.  In his first features - Au nord de l'hiver (1993),  L'Enfant des neiges (1995) and Le Dernier trappeur (2004) - Vanier showed a genius for capturing the raw beauty of the natural world, often in the most inhospitable of settings (the snowy wastelands of Siberia and North America).  This talent of his brought a powerful sense of drama to his first fictional film, Loup (2009), and just about redeems his latest cinematic offering, although this time his visual symphony is almost drowned out by surfeit of careless sentiment milking.  It's an awkward feast that Vanier serves up for us - breathtaking vistas in one of the most stunning areas of France (the Haute Maurienne-Vanoise valley in the Rhône-Alpes) and a plot that looks like it may have been lifted from the tackiest low budget television drama ever made, with dialogue to match.  One indulgence we can forgive Vanier is the casting of Mehdi El Glaoui in a supporting role - he played Sébastien in the original series.

As in Barratier's film, the WWII trappings prove to a totally unnecessary embellishment which only distract us from what is at the heart of the film, a heartwarming tale of one boy and his dog.  Had Vanier dispensed with all the recycled 'evil Nazi v. heroic Resistance' nonsense and focussed on the central relationship between the little boy (charmingly played by first-time actor Félix Bossuet) and his screen-hogging hound his film would have had much greater impact.  In his enchanting Le Renard et l'enfant (2007), Luc Jacquet showed how beguiling a simple story about a child falling in love with a wild animal can be and it is strange that Vanier should have felt the need to open up the narrative to include a hackneyed WWII plot that doesn't convince anyone.  The blistering naivety of its storyline and characterisation, to say nothing of its outbursts of tacky sentimentality, makes Belle et Sébastien an ordeal that most adults will find hard to stomach, although (like the series on which it is based) it will doubtless have an immense appeal to children.

Film Synopsis

High up in the French Alps during the Second World War, the idyllic tranquillity of a small village is about to broken by the sudden arrival of a platoon of German soldiers.  Here, in this Alpine haven, a six-year-old boy named Sébastien meets and befriends a stray dog, whom he christens Belle.  As Nazis begin persecuting the local population to weed out members of a resistance group, Sébastien and Belle lend their support to thwart a common enemy...