Film Review | Jean de Florette

Directed By Claude Berry ( 1986)

120 Min.

Starring: Yves Montand, Gerard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil

Set amid the arid small-holdings of rural Provence, to the overture of Giuseppe Verdi’s La forza del destino, Jean de Florette does as much to expose the character of the fertile and cherished French landscape as it does the ingenuity of the natives who daily nurture her riches.

The action follows the uncle and nephew team of Cesar (Yves Montand) and Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) Soubeyran in their comically sly attempts to ruin the amiable romantic Jean Cadoret’s (Gerard Depardieu) dream of living at one with nature.

The success of his dream relies on a ready water source, and ultimately upon the abundant well which the Soubeyran’s conceal from the newcomer, entering into a cold war of withheld resources, which is conducted secretly behind the mask of neighbourly friendship.

A profound observation of human power relations and the bare-bones anatomy of war, Claude Berri’s stunning adaption of the Marcel Pagnol novel is that rarest piece of art which is capable of capturing the universal character of man simply and elegantly through the lives of a hand full of characters.

Pagnol’s philosophical critique of Rouseau’s noble savage is expertly rendered, revealing the romantic man of the city to be ill-equipped for the savagery which abounds in nature. On the film’s release in 1986 Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times commented on 'the feeling that the land is so important the human spirit can be sacrificed to it' and throughout we are made to feel that the landscape exerts the power of a beautiful and provocative femme fatale over the male characters, causing malice, corruption and even death as they compete for tender reward of her charms.

During the 1990’s it became so characteristic of the English fascination with France that the London advertising agency Lowe, Lintas and Partners used it as the model for their now famous Stella Artois adverts, even using the theme from Verdi.

At heart Jean de Florette is a film featuring some of France’s greatest character actors (Montand, Depardieu, Auteuil) playing some of the most well-formed characters that French cinema can boast, and yet in which the lead role is reserved for the beautiful but austere French landscape and the treasures she holds, and occasionally withholds.

Rating: 9/10

Christopher Lewis