Product: Jean de Florette (1987)
Rating: 5.0
heart-rending and truly great
This is one of those films that continues to haunt the imagination years after you see it. The conflict is so classic: a good and dangerously naive man (Depardieu) falls prey to a calculating and evil neighbor (Montand), who is helped along the way by a hapless relation (Auteuil). These actors form a trio that is unsurpassed in French cinema and their chemistry is so painfully believable that it is hard to watch the events unfold.The prolific Depardieu has never been better as the well-intentioned hunchback returning to his inherited land to live a more natural life. Montand, his murderous neighbor who covets the land, is so believably evil as a dried up and selfish man that it is truly chilling. And Auteuil is so weak and pathetic as he participates in Montand's machinations, yet so lonely that he is sympathetic as well.It is so refreshing to see a film that is so un-Hollywood, so self-consiciously determined to tell a great tragic story rather than some syrupy mishmash.Get it. YOu won't be disappointed.