Product: Manon of the Spring (1987)
Rating: 5.0
Completes one of the greatest film stories of recent decades
MANON OF THE SPRING completes the story that began in JEAN DE FLORETTE. It is not a sequel; it is the second half of a single tale. Although the first film can be watched independently of the first, neither really stands completely on its own.The second film takes place several years after the first, and centers on two of the characters from the first film--Le Papet played by Yves Montand and Ugolin played by Daniel Auteuil--as well as a young girl who is now living on the land upon which Jean de Florette lived in the first. The girl named Manon and played by the exquisitely beautiful Emmanuelle Béart, turns out to be the daughter of Jean de Florette. Ugolin, observing her, falls hopelessly in love with us, yearning for her in a manner so desperate and passionate that you sense immediately the impossibility of its being fulfilled. The film deals with her resolve to wreck her revenge on those responsible for the death of her father.What she doesn't realize is the possibility of an even more potent revenge that lies beyond her control, but which arises near the end of the film. The two films are great without the last half hour of the film, but it is the last half hour that makes the two-film sequence a truly magnificent masterpiece. We find near the end revelations that make the story that the two films tell almost impossibly tragic. I can say no more than this without giving away key elements of the plot.The two films are both quite superb in the picture they paint of rural France. The idyllic beauty of the countryside belies the hidden blackness in the hearts of many of the characters. Yves Montand's character, especially, displays the karma attaching to a petty, mean-spirited viciousness. If the first film belonged to Gérard Depardieu, the second one, and as it were retrospectively both films, to Yves Montand. Although Montand made a few more films before his death, this was far and away the greatest thing he did in his last years, and in a way stands as the last great achievement in a grand career. I'm not certain he was ever better than in the last half hour of this great film.I cannot urge strongly enough for anyone who loves movies to see these two films. Even those who do not normally enjoy foreign films with love these. The story told is too grand, and the performances too stellar, not to adore them.