Marius and Jeannette (1997)

A useful film, if one's studying French socialist thought. In this film all characters are mere debris at the mercy of a capitalist tide. And the "terror" of globalization looms just over the horizon! A serious study of the French Revolution (1789) and its Reign of Terror would be helpful background to understanding this director's seeming grudge against life's realities as acted out by the lead characters. The story line is minimal, with an overpowering message of "death to all aristocrats (capitalists)!" immediately recognizable to any student of French history. Do they still buy this tripe on the Left Bank? Apparently so. If you're watching this as part of a college course you may well ask yourself just how sensible your professor is. But then, he/she's likely to have long since tipped his hand by continually denigrating all that questions Marxist/socialist dogma. Continue to feign agreement, as your final course grade may well depend on it!

I am probably biased against this film, as I am studying it at school in extension french, but this is the most terrible movie I have ever seen. The people simply can't act; the camera angles are always dodgy as, and there is almost no backing music; a terrible film all up.Not to mention, the whole 'old-people love' thing is just gross. Not to rain on anyone's parade, but it is kind of sickening seeing Gerard Meylan's derrière TWICE in the film.All round, a terrible film; no plot, no acting skill... terrible quality piece. I'm sure Robert Guediguian is a very talented director and producer, but this movie was not some of his finer work.

This movie is for those who want to believe that life can be pleasant even if one is a broke divorced unemployed mother of two without prospects as long as one believes. In this case the requisite belief is not in god or in life everlasting but in love & some communitarian evolution of romanticized communism. Our once deserted and once widowed unemployed heroine finds love amongst the deconstructing ruins of a cement factory with its emotionally and "physically" crippled security guard. The film is not unrelieved tendentious reality though the only action is a rather bloody bar room brawl from which the protagonists escape drunk but without injury. The one great myth that deserves debunking is that a dozen people in a third of a dozen seperate households can live cheek by jowl in a fading tenement, sharing all intimacies and still like each other. I was somewhat mean in giving it a 6 but it sure isn't worth the 8.7 average rating that prompted me to see it. The French must have different eyes.

Robert Guédiguian, director of the film Marius et Jeannette, loves the working class people. I have no quarrel with that. On the other hand, being a socialist director doesn't guarantee a movie that has much artistical merit. The message is loud and clear: working class people are happier than the guys with all the money, because their emotional lives are purer and not spoiled by capitalist values. The problem with this kind of film is that people who adhere to democratic values need not be taught this stuff at such a childish - and sometimes downright stupid - level, while the capitalist viewer sees a conformation of his prejudice that a "communist" director has neither the intelligence nor the good taste to make a film about the working class that is worth spending his costly time on. Guédiguian's intentions are admirable, the result is hard to take seriously.