Those who seek to compare and contrast, trace lineage etc will cite as distinguished forbears of The Grocer's Son such titles as Une Hirodelle a fait le printemps, Le Grand chemin etc on the grounds that all three titles feature an urban protagonist either choosing or being obliged to move to a rural setting. Writer-director Eric Guirado throws us a curve inasmuch as HIS protagonist Antoine (Nicilas Cazale) had it up to here with Rural some ten years before the story starts and lit out for Paris where he has been drifting from dead-end job to dead-end job although Antoine would probably argue 'okay, I'm getting nowhere but I'm doing it in Paris, man'. Things change when his autocratic father, Daniel Duval, suffers a heart attack and Antoine very reluctantly agrees to return home and help his mother run the family grocery business, specifically by driving the mobile grocery van to the outlying hamlets that rely on it. His intitial contempt for the customers gradually turns to respect, admiration, affection and yes, even love, end of story. It is, of course, so much more than that and Guirado brings his documentary experience to bear and draws his cast from professional actors - none more distinguished than Paul Crauchet - and ordinary people thus creating a seamless blend of docu-drama replete with sub-plots like the brother who conceals from his family the fact that his wife has left him for some time and is now pregnant by another man, and the love interest, Clotilde Hesme, the divorcée of whom Antoine is enamoured. Purists may argue that Guirado tends to 'sell' the virtues of rural living and ignore the harsher realities explored so brilliantly in the recent documentary La Vie Moderne, and they would be correct so far as it goes but this remains a wonderfully lyrical film that should not be missed.
Review of The Grocer's Son
