The Well Digger's Daughter (2012)

Reverse the roles, sons instead of daughters - and men would loathe this film . As a female and a grandmother I certainly did. The father was a buffoon and had no RESPECT whatsoever for any of his 5 daughters.And inferring it was his wife who gave him a daughter, then another, then another daughter does not know simple biology. The MALE determines the sex of a child not the female . If men treated their females like this in the 1930's in Europe I shudderto think how many centuries it will take for Womens Human Rightsto take hold in countries like the Middle East and Asia .

Daniel Auteuil is one of my favorite actors... in the world.I rented this film earlier tonight from Video Futur, a French movie rental chain, after missing it at the cinéma. My girlfriend and I just finished watching it. Wow.It's fantastic !!! Of course, you should start with the Marcel Pagnol classics like Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. Read the books, watch the films, fall in love with the south of France. If you're already familiar with the works of Pagnol, you can jump right in and enjoy. Heck, even if you're not familiar with them, watch this film anyway.In my opinion, Provence is the most beautiful place in France, and possibly the world. Pagnol used real locations in Provence, including Aubagne, Salon, and other locales as the settings for his best dramas.This is no exception. La fille du puisatier (English: The welldigger's daughter) is a well-crafted story that I believe Americans, and cinema fans all over the world, will enjoy. The film is an excellent and faithful adaptation of Pagnol's original story, and the actors' performances elevate this film to the highest level.Auteuil, along with co-stars Kad Merad and Jean-Pierre Darroussin knock this thing out of the park. I remember Merad and Darroussin from other films, including L'immortel (English: 22 bullets), but this takes the cake.This is not to take away from the amazing performances of the daughter in the title, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey as Patricia Amoretti, as well as the solid performance of Emilie Cazenave as her sister Amanda.All in all, great acting, great writing (based on an already-good story) and beautiful cinematography, made for a completely enjoyable viewing experience, at least for us.I hope this comes out soon in the US so that American audiences can see for themselves.I remember seeing Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources (English: Manon of the spring) in my high school French class. My teacher was nice enough to share some French movies with us. Decades later, I'm lucky enough to be living in France, putting all those French lessons to good use, enjoying Pagnol again, and dreaming, everyday, about moving back to the south.....to Provence.

Superficially this is chocolate-box romance. It is set in beautiful countryside in a world of constant summer. Even though it takes place over a year there is continuous warm sunshine.The story centres on the well-digger, Pascal: the daughter, Patricia, is a cipher, without personality, with no voice, and seemingly incapable of independent action. Does anyone really want to see this kind of woman in fiction or in life? Pascal is well-drawn; he is self-centred, a martinet, a hypocrite, unwilling to listen to anyone, and actually rather stupid. He is also crude- he comments on his dead wife's sexuality to his employee.At the opening of the film the daughter is described as universally liked because of her kindness. Of course she is kind. She is looking for affection and love after being sent from her home and mother at a very young age. You can imagine Pascal forcing his wife to accept this- 'in the interests of the child' of course. If the baby had been a boy... The daughter is only allowed back because circumstances force her return.How to explain her easy seduction by an unsuitable youth after one brief meeting? Obviously she is looking for love at any cost.Pascal tries to reach a deal with the youth's parents. No chance. He immediately disowns her. He casts her out (Victorian tyrant!) and only pretends to kiss her goodbye to deceive his other daughters. Yet it would have been better for everyone is she had stayed at home.Months pass. Still summer though! He destroys unread a letter from her. Then he goes to visit her. The first thing he does is to pretend to drown the baby. What a joke! This terrifies her, but she says nothing, and he shows no shame at his cruel stupidity.He soon wants to take over the baby (because it is a longed-for boy, presumably). She accepts this. She is a doormat throughout.The youth has made only one very feeble attempt to find the girl. Yet they agree to get married. Only after he has been killed in a blazing plane and found alive unharmed. What a load of rubbish.At the altar he says he doesn't want to marry. Only a joke! She believes him, but no recrimination from her for his brutal insensitivity.There are equally daft subplots, for example with the second daughter having an unaccountable passion for the daughter's castoff. This reults in an off-on-off probably-on relationship.It is well acted throughout. And it is pretty.Incidentally there is a war on, but everyone ignores it.

Remaking a Pagnol film is asking for trouble. Film snobs will dismiss the remake without giving it a chance, though 60 years ago those same film snobs probably dismissed Pagnol as a film director, finding him hopelessly inferior to Renoir or ... Afficionados of Raimu, an unquestionably great actor - when he had a good role - will say that no one can do what he did. And they would be right; no one can out-Raimu Raimu. A force of nature, because Raimu at his best was a force of nature, cannot be imitated or equaled. But a role can be done a different way, even if the words are the same, just as different great actors can succeed at Hamlet or King Lear. And yes, I speak of Shakespeare. Theater/literature snobs can guffaw, but who cares? Let them go about their business.And I will go about mine, which is to talk about this movie, which is remarkably moving. Moving in part because Pagnol's script was a masterpiece, yes, but also because this is a very well-done realization of it.The first thing that struck me about this movie was the color, when you see the scenery. Pagnol, for whatever reason, really didn't do a lot with scenery in his black and white movies. This movie shows what that deprived us of. It is done in the best tradition of the color versions of Jean de Florette, Manon des sources, La gloire de mon père, and Le château de ma mère. The countryside around Salon de Provence comes alive, and is beautiful.I was also struck by the use of music, which again is not a high point in Pagnol's version. The Italian song, so wonderfully recorded by Caruso, is used in very moving ways here. Auteuil has a better sense of how to use music in a film than Pagnol did, at least with this script.But the heart of this movie is Pagnol's text, and this cast, a great one, does it beautifully. True, at times, as I marveled at the genius of Pagnol's text, I wondered if that meant these actors were acting it, rather than becoming the characters. That may be true in some cases, though not for Kad Merad, who becomes Philippet every bit as much as Fernandel did. I can hear Raimu reciting the lines Daniel Auteuil speaks, and beautifully, perhaps because they are so different, certainly because Raimu delivered them in a way that engraved them in my memory. But Auteuil makes them very moving as well. He is not a force of nature as Raimu was, but his Pascal is also a real character.What I realized, over and over again watching this movie, is that the script was indeed written by a playwright, and Auteuil respects that. We still have fully-developed scenes, as movies used to have when they were still imitating theater. And, as a result, with this great script and these great actors, we have deeply moving moments, such as when Pascal says goodbye to his daughter, sending her off to raise her bastard child elsewhere. Or, even more deeply moving, when the parents of the father of her child, having just lost their son in the war, come to see the child, the last remnant of their now lost son. Every line of that scene is deeply moving: Pascal's pride in his grandson, the parents' grief and longing for their son. (I didn't care for the mother's final admission that she burned her son's letter rather than deliver it to Patricia; that was better done in the previous version.)A film script is like a play: it can be done in more than one way, if it's worth doing - as this script most certainly is. It will not wipe away memories of Pagnol's 1940s version, nor should it. You don't have to forget Olivier's Hamlet to love Jacobi's, or Branaugh's, or ... I suspect the very film snobs who dismiss Pagnol's own work will cause this film not to enjoy the success it deserves, but that would be a real crime. This is, in fact, a wonderful realization of Pagnol's very beautiful, very wonderful script.---------------------------------I watched this movie again this evening, and really have nothing to add to what I wrote before, other than to say that it is a beautiful realization of Pagnol's script. Auteuil, Merad, and Darroussin are three of modern French film's finest actors, and they all give first-rate performances here. The often wonderful dialogue is delivered as in a great movie or play, lovingly and beautifully. Watch this. It's a deeply moving and wonderful movie.