MY MOTHER'S CASTLE
A film review by Ken Johnson
Copyright 1992 Ken Johnson
90 min., PG, Drama, 1990, In French with English subtitles Director: Yves Robert Cast: Sorry, missed them
A young French boy is in love with the hills of France. He would like to spend all his time in his family's second house in the hills, but because of schooling and his father's job he is unable to spend much time there. He tries, whenever possible, to go up to the hills so he can have fun.
I found MY MOTHER'S CASTLE to be a very interesting and beautiful film to watch. What makes this film so interesting is not so much the plot, as it is in the scenery. I highly recommend that if this film comes to a theater near you, you go see it. It will be well worth the trip. I rate MY MOTHER'S CASTLE a four on a scale of zero to five. MY MOTHER'S CASTLE is rated PG and I couldn't find anything that anyone might find objectionable.
MY MOTHER'S CASTLE is the sequel to Yves Robert's earlier film MY FATHER'S GLORY, which unfortunately I have not yet been able to see. MY MOTHER'S CASTLE, and MY FATHER'S GLORY, are based on the writings of Marcel Pagnol. From the way this film ends I think that it will be the last in the series. The title of the film makes little sense until just before the end when it gets explained to you.
The best part, I feel, were the locations used for the filming. I assume that the locations are in France, but at any rate they are perfect. The film would not be near as good as it is if the locations weren't as well picked. The opening credits are shown while a camera pans around a beautiful mountain. The acting was really well done, by all the people in the film. The actors really convince you that they are the person in the film. I started to actually feel for the people in the film.
I almost didn't go to see this film when it was playing in my town, because I thought that it was going to be boring. I haven't had a good record with imported films. I have seen a dreadful French film called CHOCOLAT, a boring Danish film called PELLE THE CONQUEROR, a semi-poor French film called BAXTER, and a reasonably good Italian film called THE STORY OF BOYS AND GIRLS. But I am really glad that I went and saw MY MOTHER'S CASTLE. I just can't put into words the way that I felt about it. I am going to try to see if I can get my local art/import theater to get MY FATHER'S GLORY to see if it is just as good.
Ken J. blj@mithrandir.cs.unh.edu
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews