My Afternoons with Margueritte Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

My Afternoons with Margueritte Blu-ray Movie Review

The Reader.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 6, 2012

Oh, my. Before he made headlines a few days ago for officially coming out of the closet, Anderson Cooper had created a bit of another sensation with a giggling fit from his CNN news show which went viral on YouTube. Cooper had a heck of a time trying to keep a straight face, not to mention trying not to dissolve into helpless laughing, reading a pun filled rant against Gérard Depardieu, the iconic Academy Award nominated actor who had gotten an additional fifteen minutes of infamy when he (how to put this delicately?) relieved himself in public, on an airplane, no less. In a case of Art imitating Life, a scene in My Afternoons with Margueritte contains a scene of someone (how to put this delicately?) relieving himself in public, as Depardieu’s character Germain looks on, aghast. Seemingly since the time movies began, press agents have used the gambit that their star charges were only “researching a role” when they do all sorts of stupid things, but evidently since My Afternoons with Margueritte had already wrapped when this incident occurred (and Depardieu was playing the public “reliever” anyway), there never seemed to be any connection linking Depardieu’s odd choice of a restroom with this similarly odd little moment in what is otherwise a kind of quiet character study that has Art House written all over it it (hopefully not in—and there is no way to put this delicately—pee). Depardieu’s Germain is a brute of a man, a large, lumbering jack of all trades whose upbringing included a harridan mother who never tired of telling her son what an abject failure he was, something Germain seems to have taken to heart and realized as an adult. When he meets the elderly and patrician Margueritte (Gisèle Casadesus) in an idyllic park, his life begins to change for the better when the old woman opens an unexpected portal to Germain’s shrouded mind: literature.

My Afternoons with Margueritte wants to be a feel good flick clad in typical Art House garb, but it’s a rather turgid downer for much of its relatively brief running time, as Germain’s abusive past keeps poking its head into the main Germain-Margueritte storyline via a series of interrupting flashbacks. Germain is shown to have endured all sorts of horrors growing up, whether it be from his hideous mother or (perhaps even more disturbingly in a way) one of his teachers, who seems to delight in embarrassing the young boy in front of his classmates. Playing against this relentless litany of sadness is the growing affection between Margueritte and Germain, a relationship which hopefully will establish some much needed self-confidence and self-esteem in the manchild.

The film’s original title of La tête en friche might be charitably translated as “an uncultivated mind”, and while Margueritte’s attempts to instill some culture into Germain are commendable, one might wonder why she starts that process with Albert Camus’ The Plague, of all things. As she reads Camus’ tale of death and destruction, Germain’s overly visual imagination comes to life, and director Jean Becker suddenly interrupts his scenic valentine to the splendors of the sylvan French countryside with cutaways to footage of hordes of dead rats being dumped into garbage cans. It’s an unsettling image, and one which seriously upends the film’s quieter ethos.

My Afternoons with Margueritte is incredibly scenic, continuing Becker’s love affair with rural France. But dramatically the film sputters a time or two, probably never moreso than in its depiction of Germain’s hideous mother, who is shown in one scene after another to be nothing less than despicable. And then in a supposedly stunning denouement, it’s revealed that she wasn’t actually all that bad, but in this case the revelation is simply too little, too late and doesn’t quite feel real as a result.

Depardieu was once a matinee idol of sorts, a strapping young actor with Gallic good looks and charm, but his physical appearance has devolved so much lately that they may need to invent a new ultrawide aspect ratio simply to be able to catch the actor’s immense girth in the frame. His increasing obesity makes any attempt to pass him off as a romantic lead harder and harder, and yet against all odds (and especially with regard to this somewhat oafish character), he’s given not just a girlfriend in My Afternoons with Margueritte, but a young lass probably half (maybe even a third) of his age, played winsomely by Sophie Guillemin. As kind of smarmy as this all is, it actually plays better than might be expected, due largely to Guillemin’s unassuming flair with the material. There’s something very natural and heartfelt here which helps the material rise above what might be unseemly otherwise.

In a very real way, though, the actual love story here is between Germain and Margueritte (with an age disparity on the opposite side of things, as it were). Margueritte recognizes something nascent in Germain, despite his boorishness, and likewise Germain finds himself opening up to the elderly woman in a way his background and upbringing have never allowed him to before. There’s a fairly predictable arc here, with Margueritte attempting to shepherd Germain through the expected traumas of learning to read better and improve his vocabulary, and then a brief pass into outright melodrama when Margueritte reveals she’s suffering from macular degeneration and will soon be blind. It doesn’t exactly take a rocket scientist to figure out where My Afternoons with Margueritte is going, and even with an unnecessary tangent that sees Margueritte shuttled off to a care facility, the going is by and large emotionally involving and even uplifting.

My Afternoons with Margueritte Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

My Afternoons with Margueritte is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of a coalition of producing partners, including New Video, Cohen Media Group and Studio Canal, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Director Jean Becker and cinematographer Arthur Cloquet fill this film with gorgeous shots of the French countryside, often done with diffuse lighting spilling over fields and trees and giving this high definition presentation an intentionally gauzy look. Conversely and perhaps even a bit strangely, a lot of the interior footage is done in minimal lighting and yet pops quite nicely, with abundant fine object detail and good clarity. Colors are somewhat muted here, but are decently saturated and pop quite nicely. Contrast is occasionally just slightly problematic, especially with regard to the darker interior scenes, where it could have been pushed a bit more to increase shadow detail and clarity.

My Afternoons with Margueritte Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

My Afternoons with Margueritte features two DTS-HD Master Audio audio options, a 5.1 track and a 2.0 stereo fold down. This isn't a film which offers a lot of opportunity for amazing surround activity, but given appropriate expectations, the 5.1 mi here is actually rather nicely done, albeit in a very subtle way. Ambient environmental sounds are well placed around the sound field (listen to the nice use of discrete channelization in the park scenes, for just one good example). Fidelity is very good, with dialogue very cleanly presented, and Laurent Voulzy's understated score is nicely splayed around the sound field. This is a quiet, intimate film without a bunch of in your face audio moments (though Depardieu tends to yell now and again), but on their own subtle merits, both of these DTS-HD Master Audio tracks get the job done quite nicely.

My Afternoons with Margueritte Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (HD; 1:35)

My Afternoons with Margueritte Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

My Afternoons with Margueritte has all the hallmarks of a—well—a Hallmark made for television movie, albeit one unusually brutal in its depiction of the sad childhood of Germain. In fact it's in these melodramatic elements that the story seems to come at least partially undone, for the rest of the film is an understated and quietly affecting story of two lonely souls reaching out for each other and finding common ground. Even some of the melodramatic elements are compromised, as when Germain's mother is revealed not to be a total villainess, a revelation which just seems half hearted after all the sturm und drang that has gone before. My Afternoons with Margueritte does have several saving graces, however. Depardieu and Casadesus are marvelous together, and Guillemin makes an appealing, if incredibly unlikely, romantic foil for Depardieu. And the film is just filled to the brim with lovely shots of a pastoral, rural France that almost seem to breathe with a Gallic calm. This isn't a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination, but it's an engaging one and should be enjoyed by those who like their Art House fare with a bit of a French accent. This Blu-ray offers excellent video and audio, and even without any supplements to speak of, it comes Recommended.