Marius (2013)
Directed by Daniel Auteuil

Film Review

Encouraged by the success of his directing debut with La Fille du puisatier (2011), Daniel Auteuil immediately threw himself into a project which a more experienced filmmaker would have balked at: a complete adaptation of Marcel Pagnol's Trilogie marseillaise, a series of three stage plays which had previously been committed to celluloid in the 1930s.  Auteuil obviously feels he owes a lot to Pagnol.  It was, after all, his role as Ugolin in Claude Berri's Jean de Florette (1986), based on a late Pagnol novel, that made him an international star.  Having grown up in Avignon, the actor-director also shares something of Pagnol's affinity for la belle Provence, so if anyone can make a reasonable stab at bringing Pagnol's best known work to a 21st century cinema audience, that man is probably Daniel Auteuil.

Marius is the first instalment in Pagnol's three-part saga, first adapted for cinema by Alexander Korda in 1931.  At the time, Pagnol lacked the confidence to direct the film and its sequel Fanny, himself, and so he hired more experienced filmmakers, acting under his close supervision.  Considered one of the first masterpieces of French sound cinema, Marius exemplifies Pagnol's genius for observational drama, his characters engaging and moving us with their small-scale human dramas and seemingly irresolvable conflicts.  Pagnol was never a showy film director.  When he came to make his own films, it was always with a simplicity that allowed his audience to focus on his characters and their everyday crises, an approach that remains refreshingly direct and truthful.

It is this honest simplicity that is sadly lacking in Auteuil's remake of Marius.  Attractively shot the film may be, in a way that conveys as much of the beauty and charm of Provence as Pagnol's own films did, it nonetheless provides a pretty hollow cinema experience compared with the gut-wrenching ordeal that Pagnol consistently served up throughout his filmmaking career.  The fault lies not in the performances - Auteuil assembles a first rate cast, all giving of their best - nor in its screenplay, which is almost religiously faithful to Pagnol's original text.  What diminishes the film is Auteuil's habit of tacking on well-worn clichés, using these as an unnecessary garnish to (presumably) make his film more accessible to a mainstream cinema audience.  The most egregious example of this is the use of Charles Trenet's contemporaneous song La Mer to (lazily) underline Marius' devotion to his first love, the sea - an unnecessary populist indulgence that leaves a sour aftertaste in the mouths of true connoisseurs of Pagnol's work.

On the acting front, the film is much harder to fault.  As well as directing the film, Auteuil takes one of the lead roles, César, and turns in another solid character performance in the part immortalised by the legendary stage and film actor Raimu (considered by Orson Welles as the greatest actor of them all).  In contrast to Raimu, whose presence dominates all three parts of the original Marseille Trilogy, Auteuil does not monopolise our attention but instead allows his two co-stars to take centre stage as the star-crossed lovers, Marius and Fanny.  Having been nominated for a César for his role in Bertrand Tavernier's La Princesse de Montpensier (2010), Raphaël Personnaz has emerged as one of France's most promising young actors in recent years, his saturnine good looks and mercurial charm making him ideal for the part of the bitterly conflicted Marius.  Making her screen debut as Fanny, Victoire Bélézy has much the same impact as Orane Demazis had in the original films - she brings such fragility and innocence to her portrayal that you can scarcely avoid being moved to tears by her character's plight.  Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Marie-Anne Chazel add further lustre to a well-chosen ensemble - Auteuil could hardly have come up with a better cast.

If Daniel Auteuil's objective was to take Pagnol's old plays and present them in a way that is more palatable to a modern cinema audience, then he has certainly succeeded.  His Marius is a lovingly crafted piece of cinema that will doubtless arouse a resurgence of interest in Marcel Pagnol's oeuvre around the world, which is no bad thing.  However, being a remake, it is too easy to make comparisons with the original and in doing so the flaws in Auteuil's film become abundantly evident.  This is a film that rewards the eyes far more than it does the heart, and having watched it you feel much more incined to go and watch the original rather than Auteuil's equally lavish follow-up.  Marius was released in France on the same day as its sequel Fanny.  The third film in the series, César, is currently in production and is scheduled to be released in 2014.

Film Synopsis

In the Old Port of Marseille, César manages a bar with his son Marius.  The latter dreams only of sailing away to far off lands, in one of the ships he sees everyday, unaware that he is fondly loved by Fanny, the attractive girl who sells seashells at the front of his bar.  Marius has also loved Fanny, since childhood, but he has been unable to bring himself to admit this fact, either to himself or to the woman who pines in secret for him.  When she learns that Marius is planning to leave Marseille and begin a long sea voyage, Fanny finally bottles up the courage to tell him of her love for him.  But Fanny has another admirer, the sailmaker Panisse...