Alessandro (Stefano Corsi) is an easygoing widowed teacher who can't bear to give low marks in oral exams. He prefers to play his students bumptious tarantellas and dance on his desk. He lives with his eccentric misfit brother (another Italian) and 15 year-old daughter. He has known several gorgeous women (we meet them) and has more in his daily life, but none is able to pin him down. He reads books to hospital patients, one of them an ageing beauty Agathe (Anouk Aimee) who is alienated from her daughter. Finally, after a lot of comic business, some funny, some not-so, Agathe dies and her daughter Florence (Clotilde Courau) attends the funeral. We have to suspend disbelief as Alessandro falls for her, and eventually she attends a concert given by the ensemble he sings with. (Three samples of its music by Christina Pluhar are lovely.) It's a touching ending but wanting credibility because we know so little about Florence. Anyway, this movie has bags of charm with the two Italian brothers feuding in their native language amidst the lovely architecture of Strasbourg, and writer/director Philippe Claudel deserves credit.
Review of Tous les soleils
