La téte en friche

My afternoons with Margueritte

21 Sep 2011

Director: Jean Becker

France

2010

82 min

An intelligent, sensitive, heart warming, comedy in which Gérard Depardieu plays a simple man in a small village in South Western France, who is befriended by an elderly lady (Giséle Casadesus) who reads to him in the park. A touching, light but not superficial film in which the performances are sharp and well observed, the relationships between the locals are finely depicted and often laugh-out-loud funny. The whole thing reeks of Gallic charm.

Director Jean Becker has a long pedigree of heartwarming films and manages to create such a sympathetic double act from the hulking Depardieu and the bird-like Casadesus that the audience is carried along by the whimsical story.