[There are two back issues that reviewed JEAN DE FLORETTE, the film that preceded MANON: 00089 and 00149. In addition, Mark did a review that was not posted here but is also available. Send mail to movies-request@mtgzy.att.com to request them. -ecl]
MANON OF THE SPRING
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1988 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: This is the second of two films that
tell a single story between them. But the story is
engrossing and takes place on a richly textured background of
French village life. In spite of being French with English
subtitles this is a very approachable story. Rating (for the
story as a whole): +2.
A few months ago I reviewed JEAN DE FLORETTE, the film that makes up the first half of the film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Marcel Pagnol. I refused to rate JEAN DE FLORETTE by itself because, unlike some reviewers, I did not feel it stood by itself as a story. The story proceeds to a natural breaking point, but a point unsatisfying as an end of a story. MANON OF THE SPRING continues the story years later. It works only slightly better as a self-contained story and probably should not be rated by itself either. We have essentially a single film and the parts should be separated by at most an intermission of an hour or so. I cannot help feeling that even more of the story would fit together for me had I not allowed so long a time to elapse between seeing the two films.
As MANON OF THE SPRING begins, Manon has grown into a beauty, but has grown up a little wild in the hills where her father tried to build his farm. There is some question as to how much she knows of the events that happened when she was a young girl. Knowledge that the audience assumed she already knew comes to her as a revelation that brings her to tears. It is only then that she starts plotting a revenge that I had earlier assumed she had years to think about. the story is engrossing and credible through most of the film. Then suddenly the plot twists again under the all-too-obvious hand of the storyteller. Rather than a solid drama, the film swerves into melodrama trying too hard for too contrived an ending.
But while the ending damages the credibility and dramatic power of the story, it cannot damage the beautiful portrait of French village life. This is a film in which the background is as compelling as the foreground. In the final analysis, how people live is of more interest than what the people do. And the characters become more interesting as well. Ugolin, who is little more than a sidekick in the earlier, comes into his own as a character. His love for Manon, the woman he had wronged years earlier, is pitiful and yet compelling. The viewer almost hopes that he can be forgiven the past and win Manon.
JEAN DE FLORETTE and MANON OF THE SPRING together make up a very good story that continues for nearly four hours without dragging. Rate the pair +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. If you can manage it, see the two together.
Mark R. Leeper
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mtgzz!leeper@rutgers.rutgers.edu
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