My Afternoons With Margueritte

This is a Sunday-afternoon type of film: pleasant and undemanding, though with a refreshing belief in the empowering nature of reading and a tart undercurrent about the deleterous effects of a childhood deprived of love. To all intents and purposes, it's a meeting of opposites - the bear-like Germain (Depardieu larger than ever) and the bird-like Margueritte. Germain hangs out at the local cafe with his mates, sells the produce from his garden and enjoys a relationship with bus driver Anette. He is also regarded by almost everybody as being a bit thick. Margueritte is 95, used to work for WHO and delights in literature. In the park, she reads excerpts to Germain who gradually responds to this new intellectual stimulus. In many ways, she is the enthusiastic teacher so singularly lacking from his own childhood (the one we see in flashback takes great delight in humilating the boy as he stumbles over words) Childless herself, she shows more interest in Germain than his own mother appears to do. The middle-aged man is treated with as much disdain by his elderly mother now as when he was a child. He has more meaningful conversations with his cat than with her. If this was a Hollywood film, there would be a tearful reconciliation between parent and child. Here they remain estranged emotionally (though living in close proximity) for life. It's only after his mother's death that we get an indication of the genuine maternal love that lay deeply buried, though the vast majority of Germain's life has been blighted by her cold, unfeeling behaviour (the more cynical might regard this as a mere plot machination to set up the subsequent happy ending) His mates, meanwhile, aren't sure what to make of the new Germain. They preferred the old version, one suspects because it guaranteed there was someone lower than them in the social pecking order. They will still be frittering away their time in the cafe whereas Germain will be residing in the midst of a newly established, supportive family unit.