Reviews

I didn't have the endurance to go through all the reviews, so I write with the strong possibility of being repetitious.

I was impressed with Aurdey Tatou's performance. Back then I had only seen her do pretty light stuff, like Amalie.

Actually, I was impressed with a lot of the story and actors. I thought the war scenes were pretty rough -- in other words, realistic and believable. When I saw Jodie Foster show up in the film I was at first taken aback, but her perfect French and excellent acting skills quickly allowed her to disappear into the narrative.

What I wanted to comment on, since I didn't find a reference to her in the other reviews I managed to get through, was Marion Cotillard's performance. Here she is, along with another Academy Award winning actress, playing to Audrey Tatou's lead. She plays the meanest, most evil woman you can imagine. Her character was out for revenge for the way the French Army treated her husband/lover. And she REALLY got revenge, and in some really clever ways.

I rewatched the film recently and enjoyed it every bit as much as I did the first time I saw it (except for having seen it on the big screen that first viewing). It holds up well, which says a lot for the story and direction, not to mention the high quality of the acting.

I originally saw this film the year it was released in the USA. I laughed like crazy the first time, though I knew the film was much deeper. When I returned for a second time I bit my tongue and concentrated on the real message, a very powerful one, indeed. It remains my favorite film. Have I seen better films? Sure, but this one touched my heart. It was the right film at the right time at the right place.

In the beginning, it's a real treat to see the communications specialist wandering into the recently abandoned French town carrying a cage of pigeons. This is Pvt. Plumpick, played by the late, great Alan Bates. Well, he finds the town isn't exactly abandoned and gets chased into the town's insane asylum, hiding with the patients. When he gives his name as King of Hearts (the previous name was the Duke of Clubs)the delusional patients are overjoyed to see the king return. The Germans who chased him are spooked by the crazy people and leave.

Plumpick leaves the asylum and proceeds to check out the town. He sends a two part (two pigeon) message, but one bird doesn't make it through. Then he gets knocked out by a falling pole. When he awakes the town is busy with people, but as he wanders around he sees some very odd things. His messages are equally odd and confuse the already confused British general. What they do manage to deduce is that there probably is some kind of bomb set to go off at midnight. Finally Plumpick finds out it's the asylum patients who have come into the city and assumed roles. Of course, they are thrilled to find the King and the fun really begins.

Some comments focus on the patients not being really insane, but in those days, unless the family was very rich, anyone in the family who was "off" usually got packed off to an asylum to avoid stigmatizing the family. Plus most families expected their children to work and those "off" kids were of little use to them. Also,lots of people believed insanity might be a transmittable disease. We know better these days.

The inmates have their time in the city in their various roles. They are still delusional and mostly act like children with new toys. Look for Michel Seurralt as the hairdresser, who will play Albin/Zaza in the La Cage aux Folles films. When I watch the film now -- I've watched it so many times I've lost count -- I like to focus on specific characters, and have grown to love everyone in the town.

Things move along and, of course, this dreamland can't last forever. But if you think the wonderful part about the patients running the town was theater of the absurd, just wait, the best of that is yet to come. And I can't imagine any other way the film could have ended. A very powerful conclusion adorned by the insanity of theater of the absurd. Ionesco has nothing on De Broca! Just a beautiful film that occupies a permanent space in my heart and mind.

I'm tagging this with possible spoilers, though most of what I'm writing has been seen already in "non-spoiler-tagged" comments.

This is a delightful film about self expression. Keri Russell is a waitress, Jenna, who feels trapped in her life. Her husband is a scumbag who seems only to want to own her. He is abusive and feels it necessary to control every aspect of her life. Fortunately he doesn't.

The entire cast is terrific and supportive of Jenna on her journey of self-discovery, except for the scumbag, of course. Jenna has become so repressed that she seems to have lost the will to articulate her feelings, so she communicates them through her pies. Whenever she has a problem a pie recipe occurs to her and she pours her feelings into it. This pie baking connection started when her mother (also a master pie maker)would bake pies with her and let the love flow. It was in these times she felt more loved than in any other time in her life.

Jenna has a few "adventures" on her journey and has a baked response to each one of them. She makes "evil husband" pies instead of telling the scumbag what she's feeling. When she becomes pregnant she has such low self esteem that she feels she can't be a good mother. Also, a baby will get in the way of her loosely planned escape from the scumbag. She doesn't feel right about an abortion pie but does bake a "bad baby" pie, as she initially takes out her negative feelings on the fetus.

Jenna has quite the surprise when she finds her regular OB/GYN has semi-retired and a new doc, a good looking man, has been recruited to take her place. She achieves quite the breakthrough when she lets her feelings out in a non-pie mode and plants a big kiss on the doc. An affair ensues and her pies for him are designed to make him love her more.

Her amazing talent with pies has landed her the waitress/pie baker job at Joe's Pies, a shop owned by an apparently old lecher and curmudgeon played by Andy Griffith. None of the other waitresses can stand to wait on him but our Jenna comes to the rescue. As hard as he works at being an old grump, Jenna sees through it and is the only person who "sees" him. Joe LOVES Jenna's pies and got a laugh from our audience when he ordered a slice of "bad baby" pie.

Back to the affair. Jenna is feeling better about her pregnancy because of the doc. She still thinks it will be a bad thing for her and will trap her in her awful marriage forever, but being loved and appreciated just for who she is has helped with her self doubt. But she's always running things through her mind. She swings between getting out of the affair and loving being there. No middling feelings for our Jenna.

There is a great friendship between Jenna and her two fellow waitresses, but I won't spend any time on it, as you've no doubt read about it in previous comments. Getting back to Jenna, she experiences joy previously unknown to her in her affair and more degradation by the scumbag, including one incident of public humiliation. What a weasel. Then the water breaks.

There's quite the adventure associated with the birth. The doc is in love with her (who wouldn't be?) and the scumbag comes to the room and immediately marks his territory. If there's one thing he is, it's consistent. Joe comes to visit as a fellow patient. He says "some of his liver needs to be removed". He gives her a card and tells her to read it later and wanders back to his room.

The birth is the usual scene with pain from the wife. The scumbag isn't the slightest bit interested in her pain, but when the baby turns out to be a girl he looks at Jenna like she did this on purpose to disappoint him. Jenna is a bit slow in responding to holding her girl at first but when she does, that unbelievable surge of love you feel when you have your first look at your baby hits her. I remember well when that happened to me. I didn't know I had that much love in me until my children came into my life.

Well, this is it for Jenna. She's finally had the experience of someone loving her and appreciating her for who she is. Her hatred toward her husband is at a new peak and she knows what true love is, having seen and held her baby. She finally voices her true feelings to the scumbag's face and he gets "helped" out of the hospital by a number of the staff.

All good things come to Jenna after taking this big step in her life. I think she will not have trouble expressing herself in words from this point on and we can be sure her "custom" pies will continue forever. Jenna's arc is one of beginning with self doubt and swallowing her words and emotions to finding her "other" (besides the pies) voice and letting herself say what she's thinking. This allows her to finally reach true happiness.

Keri Russell did a wonderful job with this film. She is so expressive that if a fair amount of dialog had been cut you could still tell what was going on just by watching her face and body language. Go see it, you'll laugh a lot and find your heartstrings plucked. It's a terrific film.

I saw the film yesterday and can't get it out of my mind. The direction and screenplay are lean and to the point and the best I've seen this year. The performances of Ryan Gosling and Shareeka Epps couldn't be better. The newcomer, Epps, gives an extraordinary performance for such a young girl, one that is easily on a par with Anna Paquin's in "The Piano" and Keisha Castle-Hughes' in "The Whale Rider".

I was especially drawn to the complexities of real life that were brought into focus by this film. Perhaps it takes a village to raise children but what a burden for the child when she tries to choose a mentor from people each of whom are both caring and harmful. I was reminded of the Maggie Cheung character in "Clean" whose mentor turned out to be a very unexpected person. So it is in "Half Nelson" when our young lady is faced with the situation of a non-responsive father and two highly responsive and competitive men as she seeks a male role model in her life.

This is probably a spoiler:

When we get to the end of the film we are given an open-ended conclusion. Again, like "Clean" we see the main character in a positive position. We are hopeful this means everything will be fine but we can't forget these two very flawed characters (Gosling and Cheung) are still junkies and even in the best case will always be recovering addicts. The realization is there. The tools they need to be successful are there. I left the theater hoping they will use those tools to turn their lives around.