MY MOTHER'S CASTLE
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
MY MOTHER'S CASTLE is a film by Yves Robert, based on the autobiographical writings of Marcel Pagnol. In French with English subtitles.
I note in the display ad for this film the following: "'TWO THUMBS UP ENTHUSIASTICALLY' SISKEL & EBERT". If there was ever a demonstration of the gross inadequacy of the Nos Morituri approach to movies, it is this. Exactly how many thumbs would be adequate to properly rate I leave to someone else's anatomical imaginings. For myself, I have seldom seen a movie which more perfectly also demonstrates the difference between heart-warming and sentimental, between deepening the emotional life of the viewer and exploitively manipulating him or her. To put it another way, MY MOTHER'S CASTLE was everything CINEMA PARADISO pretended to be and was not.
Yves Robert is also the creator of the two-part movie set, JEAN DE FLORETTE and MANON OF THE SPRING, movies that were received with almost fanaticism a year ago or so in Seattle. I allowed myself to miss them. Now I will have to backtrack to a little more au courant with a wonderful talent.
Speaking of talent, alas, I do not have the cast list available, which is a shame. Everyone, the schoolteacher/father, the frail mother, little Marcel, and their friends, neighbors, relatives, and adversaries, were actors, real actors, who convince, seduce, and conquer the audience.
Actually, I saw MY MOTHER'S CASTLE out of order. It is the second part, as it were, of a super-movie, the first part being MY FATHER'S GLORY. Both movies derive from the autobiographical writings of Marcel Pagnol. I must confess that being the cultural dustbin that I am I never heard of Marcel Pagnol. He appears to be something of a cultural landmark in France, an early film maker and a member of the French Academy. At the very end of MY MOTHER'S CASTLE, we see a snippet of what one assumes is a Pagnol film, something with a black cat and a woman talking to a man in his undershirt. If anyone wants to fill me in, I'd be appreciative.
Whoever the real Pagnol is, this film makes me love him. We see him as a boy on the edge of beginning manhood and we hear his adult voice as the narrator. This is a film permeated with love, love for the mother, the father, the hills of Provence, a year of growing up. But it is an honest, candid love, that sees the pimples as well as the beauty spots. I came away with a small portion of that love and that is the great wonder of MY MOTHER'S CASTLE.
Not only are the characters brought life by wonderful actors, but they are photographed in a most painterly fashion. The colors are warm as flesh, suffused with the clear light of Provence, highlighted by shadows. The hills that young Marcel loves so are stunningly beautiful. I have never traveled in that country, but if the reality can match the film--the white limestone teeth and terraces of those ancient hills, the open-work trees, the wild herbs, the life en plein air--it must be a kind of paradise.
MY FATHER'S GLORY is still playing in Seattle--both films were big hits at the last Seattle International Film Festival--and I intend to see it tonight if I can. However, I'm sure that one can see either movie independently of the other. MY MOTHER'S CASTLE begins a small precis of the other part and otherwise stands nicely on its own. I want to see the other part, not to catch up on the action or story, but because I want to see more of the Pagnol family and more of the hills of Provence.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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