My Mother's Castle
The second part of Yves Robert's filming of Marcel Pagnol's childhood memoirs completes the narrative so casually begun inMy Father's Glory--and fulfills a radiant journey we hadn't even realized we'd embarked on. Marcel is approaching his teens and acquiring a more coherent sense of the world. Accordingly,My Mother's Castleboasts a more concentrated style and unspools its story over (mostly) the space of one year, as opposed to a dozen. Whereas in the first film Robert had worked entirely with little-known players who simplybecameMarcel's family, here he calls upon screen veterans Jean Rochefort, Jean Carmet, and Georges Wilson to flesh out sharply ironical figures who loom challengingly on the young man's horizon. Consistent with Pagnol's emphasis on Provençal locations, the focal event of the film becomes the weekly walk the Marseilles-based family makes from the trolley station to their remote country cottage--a quintessentially mundane ritual that comes to be fraught with wonder, delight, and terror. It all leads to a payoff that opens the meaning of the title only as the film is reaching its transcendent conclusion.--Richard T. Jameson