By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 1.5 cats
Director: Otar Iosseliani
Starring: Jacynthe Jacquet | Otar Iosseliani | Séverin Blanchet
Original language title: Jardins en automne
Country: france
Year: 2006
Running time: 115
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417385/combined
Bruce says: “Friends or acquaintances often groan when the topic of French cinema is raised. I’m mostly puzzled by anyone who categorically dismisses French cinema. GARDENS IN AUTUMN is a film which helps me understand that position. Director Iosseliani has produced a smug little film. I’m sure, given the chance, he would quickly dismiss my criticisms. That is my hunch after watching him belittle all those who asked questions about the film during the Q & A at the New York Film Festival.
“Vincent (Séverin Blanchet) is a powerful Minister of Something-or-Other in the French government. He travels to Africa and meets with tribal leaders. Around Paris he has an entourage, fine champagne, a limousine, a fancy apartment, and lots of underlings who scamper and scurry on command. He may have a wife and several mistresses. It is hard to know what roles the various women play in his life (just like it is impossible to know what he really does for a living.) In any event, all of them are devoted to Vincent. In an instant, Vincent’s life changes when he is forcibly removed from his office. He loses everything in the process. For most men, such loss would be unbearable. Vincent, however, continues his womanizing, his drinking and his bumptious behavior as though nothing has happened. His friends, family and lovers remain faithful.
“The most pleasant surprise of the film is Michel Piccoli who plays Vincent’s mother. Drag roles are at times difficult to fit into traditional film. Piccoli comes across as a genuinely feminine French matriarch who has grown slightly more masculine in her demeanor as some women do when they age, the type of woman whose features become a bit more course and whose gestures slowly lose the grace of their younger years.
“It appears that GARDENS IN AUTUMN is intended as some sort of existential treatise on the decline of Western civilization. GARDENS IN AUTUMN makes a good case that to understand civilization’s wrongs documentary filmmaking may be a better place to look. 1.5 cats”
GARDENS IN AUTUMN was shown as part of the 2006 New York Film Festival.