La Mère Christain (1998)
Directed by Myriam Boyer

Film Review

In making this solemn drama, the actress Myriam Boyer set out to evoke her own memories of life in France in the decade after WWII and to tell a simple story about ordinary people, the kind of people she knew as a young girl. With its authentic recreation of the period (including convincing exterior locations), La Mère Christain succeeds in capturing the mood of France in the early 1950s, although direct references to the war are, as might be expected, kept to a minimum.  What we see is the sorry aftermath of the war - people rebuilding their lives and trying to put behind them the hardship of their wartime experiences.  Needless-to-say, the younger members of the community are more optimistic about the future than their older neighbours.

Whilst the film has some commendable qualities, it is somewhat hampered by Boyer's fairly unimaginative direction and a screenplay that is often tediously banal. The acting is hard to fault (Boyer is at her best in the lead role) but the secondary characters are so poorly developed that they have next to no impact. It is a reasonable attempt by a first time director and the film is not without charm. It would be twelve years before Boyer directed her next feature-length film, this time for French televison: an adaptation of Romain Gary's novel La Vie devant soi, which had previously been adapted for cinema by Moshé Mizrahi in 1977.

Film Synopsis

In the early 1950s, Mother Christain runs a small bistro in the town of Lyons.  Alone and impoverished, she is scarred by her recent tragic experiences.  Her husband died during the war and her young daughter was found dead in a coal cellar a few years ago.   Refusing to accept that her daughter died in an accident, the fifty-year old widow carefully scrutinises her clientele to determine who killed her daughter...