Review of The Snows of Kilimanjaro

In the sense that both have a penchant for introducing politics into films it could be argued that Robert Guidiguian is a Gallic Ken Loach but the link is tenuous at best for whilst Loach is only happy when clubbing the audience over the head with his tainted vision - Look, see what the bastard English are doing to the Saintly too-good-to-live IRA - Guidiguian is more subtle so that his viewpoint manifests itself wafting gently as a hint of Arpege through a boudoir keyhole. And Loach, of course, does not have access to and probably would sneer at talents like Gerard Meylan, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and the outstanding Ariane Ascaride - indeed it's fair to say that no English actress of her generation can illuminate a scene or a room like Ascarides and we have to turn to the next generation and Vanessa Redgrave to come close. This is yet another Marseille-based fable and this time around Larroussin is the Union official who, in the interests of fairness and solidarity, enters his own name in a draw to nominate 20 workers who will be dismissed to cut labor costs. Alas, one of the twenty sees fit to rob Larroussin along with his wife and sister and brother-in-law. The robbers are masked and quite by chance Larroussin discovers the identity of his ex-colleague. At this stage Guidiguian introduces his main themes; the young worker sees only that Laroussin is 'middle-class', drives a car, dines in restaurants, watches television and assumes that it has always been this way. He has no concept that Larroussin was once working-class and fought to enjoy a better life not just for himself and his family but for all the workers in the shipyard who he represented. The young colleague does not know his father, his mother has no interest in either him or his two much younger brothers and in fact he spends his share of the proceeds of the robbery to pay household bills and treats for his siblings. Larroussin withdraws the charges but it is too late to stop the wheels of justice; independently at first and then in concert, Larroussin and wife Ascaride extend practical help to the young siblings of the man who robbed them. With any other cast and any other director (Loach, for instance) this would be unpalatable propaganda but with this cast and this director it emerges as a wonderful Capra-esque feel good movie. Highly recommended.