Sous le figuier (2013)
Directed by Anne-Marie Etienne

Film Review

In essence, Sous le figuier is the sunny counterpart to Michael Haneke's Amour (2012).  Both films deal with the same grim subject, the acceptance of death through old age, but do so in completely different ways.  In contrast to the relentlessly gloomy tone of Haneke's film, director Anne-Marie Etienne opts for a far more upbeat approach and turns in an engaging feel-good piece that sets out to persuade us that death isn't necessarily the infernal drama it is often made out to be.  Whilst the film has its failings, most notably an irksome tendency to dip into saccharine sentimentality of the worst kind, it also has considerable charm and helps to restore some poetry and dignity to the phenomenon of a natural human death, which has lately become the hideous, life-sapping bogeyman of modern cinema.

For her fourth feature, the actress-turned director Anne-Marie Etienne assembles an amiable cast, with veteran actress Gisèle Casadesus taking pride of place as the central heroine, an elderly woman eager to impart her wisdom to the angst-ridden youngsters who adopt her before she shuffles off her mortal coil.  Casadesus is something of an acting legend, having made her film debut in the early 1930s and, after an active stage and screen career, she is still keen to keep her hand in as she serenely approaches her one hundredth birthday.  No one can forget her memorable turn in Jean Becker's La Tête en friche (2010), an enchanting true-to-life performance that redeems an otherwise undistinguished film, and she pulls off a similar minor miracle in Etienne's film.

Even with such a distinguished ensemble around her, one that includes such talented performers as Anne Consigny, Marie Kremer and Jonathan Zaccaï, Gisèle Casadesus cannot help stealing the focus whenever she comes into shot.  The soap-style dialogue often rings exceedingly hollow when it dribbles out of the mouths of her co-stars, but it has a truthful resonance when it trips lightly off the lips of Casadesus.   Subtle and sophisticated it may not be, but thanks mainly to the presence of its remarkable leading lady, Sous le figuier is a life-affirming little film that warms the heart and goes some way to taking the sting out of a subject that most writers and filmmakers (sadly) still regard with abject morbidity.

Film Synopsis

Nathalie, Christophe and Joëlle are all in the midst of a mid-life crisis.  Nathalie has given up on men and devotes herself religiously to her work as a chef.  Christophe's time and energy are monopolised by this three young daughters whom he struggles to bring up.  Unhappy with her partner, Joëlle spends more of her time working as a volunteer in a retirement home, neglecting her daughter as she does so.  Brought together by Selma, who is 95 and terminally ill, these three unfulfilled individuals will spend a memorable summer on the banks of the Moselle.  How ironic that the one whom they had intended to help to die should help them to live...