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Did you people see the same film I saw?

Best movie ever!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a nice film. Not too twee. A bit better than bland. It rolls easy-goingly along.I'm writing this review about a month after watching it. Usually i'll watch films a second time in order to review them – but with this i don't feel the need. I got the point the first time round. The point being: middle-aged friendship between blokes is something to be nurtured, treasured.I reckon Auteuil and Darroussin – a pair of safe solid hands – didn't have to stretch themselves too far to play these roles. It seemed as easy for them acting it as it is for us watching it. The brotherly bonhomie between the two appeared inherent, generous, unaffected.Darroussin (The Gardener) gently undermines Auteuil (The Artist) bourgeois values with simple ignorance – or better put, peasant commonsense; calls Auteuil "The Dauber". The Gardener hasn't got The Artists wider range of experience, or supposedly higher culture – but he knows a thing or two (like always having on your person a pocket knife and some string) The Dauber finds The Gardener's lack of pretension, his salt of the earth, ordinary simplicity, appealing – and eventually, even quietly enlightening.Its feel-good cinema but understated; little feelings are allowed to bubble up subtly, like small ripples on a naturally occurring pond – while waiting patiently for that feel-good fish to present himself.I'll watch it again when i'm in a dozy fishing kind of mood.Its extremely pleasant. Lol

It's a great pleasure to watch a film in which the director gives time to characters to have conversation, to not be in a hurry to move things along. The two main characters, one a successful Parisien painter, and the other, a retired working class gardener, are brought together when the artist, moving back into his childhood estate, advertises for help in creating and planting a garden...zucchini, squash, tomatoes, peppers, beans,.. not really for eating, but really for the idea of a garden, for both artistic and nostalgic reasons. When the two meet, they turn out to have been childhood friends and relive some of their experiences and impressions of their childhood.Though their lives since have taken very different paths, they easily settle in with one another, meeting every few days to tend to the garden when engaging in a series of conversations about art, work, family, love, death, etc. each providing his own unique viewpoint. The successful artist, with his money and fame, would seem to have the more respected viewpoint of the two, but as the movie progress, it becomes clearer that the gardener, with his common sense, his finding joy in simple pleasures, his not overreaching his happiness, may be the one living more authentically. I found their conversations very enlightening, not so much in their content, but the fact that they let each other finish their sentences, that the artist does not let his ego get in the way of learning from his friend. Their conversations are unhurried, filled with stillness, sometimes with one engulfed in his art, the other quietly tending his garden.I was surprised how deeply the ending touched me. It was filled with compassion, showing very much how easily we all fall into the trap of and ego-driven life and that in the end, that sort of life becomes meaningless. But for the short time that were here, if we can cultivate those things which are true and genuine, our friendships, our family, our life's work, then, although fleeting, we will look at this short time given to us not with anger or sadness, but with gratitude.BTW, both Auteuil and Daroussin are wonderful in their roles!

With Les Enfants du Marais Jacques Becker made a great film that reminded us of Marcel Pagnol (when I said as much to him last night when he attended a screening of this, his latest release, he was gracious enough to say I had paid him a great compliment) and now he has made an equally wonderful film that is slightly reminiscent of Michael Radford's Il Postino; reminiscent it that it celebrates a friendship between a simple workman and a sophisticated artist but different in that here the two men had been school-friends before going their separate ways, whilst in Il Postino they met only when thrown together in adulthood. This is simply one of the most lyrical, deceptively simple films of the last several years and I have no hesitation in bracketing it with other 'small' films that have moved me immeasurably such as Brodeuses, Se Souvenirs des belles choses, Venus Beaute etc. If there is any truth in the claim made by one reviewer that Becker tends to divide critics and public then am I definitely with the public although I do enjoy films about Paris intellectuals as well as films like this one. Unbelievably it has yet to find a distributor in England and it may well be that English distributors read and are influenced by negative French critics. If so, shame on them, for this deserves to be screened at every cinema in the land.

I found the movie rather disappointing. Despite an excellent director and a great cast, the movie doesn't rise above the caricature of what life "should" be in the French countryside.Auteuil and Daroussin are both struggling with dialogs that sound too poetic to be true. I couldn't help thinking that the "poetic gardener" character is just the idea that Parisian intellectuals have of life outside the capital.That might also be one of the few movies where Auteuil just doesn't get it right.If you want to watch a Jean Becker movie, pick any but not this one...