La Tête en friche (2010)
Directed by Jean Becker

Film Review

Now into his eighth decade, director Jean Becker continues to make films that whilst appearing to be naive and a little dépassé still manage to beguile with their simple eloquence and understated compassion.  In the same vein as Becker's previous Dialogue avec mon jardinier (2007), La Tête en friche is a slight drama set in a rural French setting which revolves around the unlikely relationship of two very different characters.  The film's simplicity and dated cinematographic style make it an easy target for critics who champion only that which is fresh and new, but these are the very qualities which make the film so humane and involving.

Gérard Depardieu is the ideal choice for the lead role of the sympathetic literary ignoramous who discovers a new lease of life through reading.  Despite being of an age when most of us plan to settle back and enjoy a cosy retirement Depardieu remains one of France's busiest actors - this is his third major role screen role of the year, after Dumas and Mammuth.  His character is a virtual reprise of the one he played in Claude Berri's Uranus (1990), an uneducated country bumpkin who acquires an ardent passion for art late in life.  It is a role that not only suits Depardieu to a tee but also seems to characterise his personality, the earthy, chummy exterior belying the complex individual who lies beneath, someone with an intense affinity with the music of the soul, poetry.

One of Jean Becker's main strengths is that he invariably manages to extract convincing performances from his actors, irrespective of their talent or experience.  The real charm of this film stems from the heart-warming rapport between Depardieu and his co-star Gisèle Casadesus, a distinguished actress of stage and screen whose film career stretches back to the 1930s.  The scenes involving Depardieu and Casadesus alone are extraordinarily captivating and moving, and what the two actors manage to convey, very simply, yet very powerfully, is an emotional attachment of the purest and most beautiful kind.  It does us good to be reminded that there are other kinds of relationship that a man and a woman can enjoy together other than the purely carnal - alas, this is something that cinema, and modern culture in general, appear to have overlooked in recent years.

La Tête en friche is by no means a masterpiece.  Its pace is at times painfully uneven, the secondary characters are little more than rudely hewn caricatures and Jean-Loup Dabadie's screenplay (an adaptation of Marie-Sabine Roger's novel) lacks the sophistication one would expect from a writer of his standing.  Yet, despite its shortcomings, this is still is an engaging and life-affirming piece of cinema, somewhat dated in its approach but nonetheless highly relevant to today's audience.  It is no bad thing to be reminded that we should slow down, take stock and reacquaint ourselves with the joys of literature.

Film Synopsis

Germain may be considered a figure of fun by those who know him, a little boy in a middle-aged man's body, but he leads a contented life and has nothing to complain about, except, possibly, the mother who seems to want to disown him.  Now in his mid-forties, Germain has never got on well with his mother.  She refuses to tell him who his father is and now he lives at the bottom of her garden in a caravan, the son she regards as a stupid accident.  Germain's inability to learn soon caused his teachers to give up on him, so now he is as illiterate and uneducated as a six-year-old, although this doesn't stop him finding odd jobs to support himself.

Germain likes to spend his leisure hours in the park, counting the pigeons as they waddle past.  It is during one of these excursions that he gets to meet Margueritte, a friendly old woman.  This is someone who has seen the world and acquired a broad education.  Germain is immediately impressed by the old woman's erudition and he willingly accepts her help in gaining an appreciation of the great works of literature.  The uneducated outsider suddenly acquires a profound love of the printed word and, through his new friendship, he discovers a world he never knew existed.  For Margueritte, the encounter turns out to be just as fruitful, and when she has problems of her own Germain is on hand to help her...