This lovely-to-look at film points to the bittersweet lessons of loss.
The four precocious kids at the heart of the drama have lost their mother temporarily, and, as troubling as her hospitalization is, it opens up the door to the children's learning about life.
First we have the eldest, Joss (Susannah York), just awakening to the power she wields by virtue of her youth. Then there's Hester (Jane Asher), who begins to see that there's a whole different reality under the appearance of things. There are also a boy who designs women's dresses and the youngest, who swipes a sweet Greengage plum from the local Tree of Knowledge.
The kids' mom, seeing narcissism in her kids, had taken them across the Channel to the Champagne country of France, to visit war cemeteries --"We have to see what other people have given up over the years," Joss explains to the exquisitely focused, enigmatic Eliot (Kenneth More).
Eliot is an exceedingly attractive character here. It's clear why the children adore him. ("He's the only one besides mother who doesn't laugh at me because I make clothes," says the young boy in the clan.) We believe the attraction between him and Joss, and we observe that the family gives Eliot a last chance at a sort of parenthood before what he probably senses is an inevitable arrest.
Meanwhile, the proprietress of a chateau where the siblings lodge, Mlle Zisi (Danielle Darrieux), has tossed aside her lesbian lover for a fling with Eliot, who finds the hotel a convenient hideout from the cops. He won't tell Zisi where he goes each weekend, and has convinced her to refrain from accepting lodgers. Zisi is painfully vulnerable with Eliot, and imperious with others. She gets a taste of her own venom from the spurned Mme Corbet (Claude Nollier): "You pretend to be his wife, but he will never marry you -- never!"
This film captures shattering truths about people. We see the contrast between a lovesick Joss, wishing an evening never to end, and the expedient coupling of Zisi and Eliot ("How can you talk about money after last night?"). However, it isn't long before Joss is acting as miserably as everyone else, dropping that letter in the mailbox even after a life-altering kiss.
This is a movie also about disappearances, and their fateful consequences. The hospitalization of the kids' mother paves the way to knowledge for her brood, but of a kind she never planned. Eliot's vanishings to Paris keep Zisi in his thrall. And the tragic Paul (David Saire), whose parents before him disappeared, passes out of sight, too, after an incident of horrible judgment.
Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, I'm reminded of the zany Larry David movie "Whatever Works" (2009), in which he marvels at the sheer "chanciness of life."
Can we taste of life's riches -- without being selfish?
The four precocious kids at the heart of the drama have lost their mother temporarily, and, as troubling as her hospitalization is, it opens up the door to the children's learning about life.
First we have the eldest, Joss (Susannah York), just awakening to the power she wields by virtue of her youth. Then there's Hester (Jane Asher), who begins to see that there's a whole different reality under the appearance of things. There are also a boy who designs women's dresses and the youngest, who swipes a sweet Greengage plum from the local Tree of Knowledge.
The kids' mom, seeing narcissism in her kids, had taken them across the Channel to the Champagne country of France, to visit war cemeteries --"We have to see what other people have given up over the years," Joss explains to the exquisitely focused, enigmatic Eliot (Kenneth More).
Eliot is an exceedingly attractive character here. It's clear why the children adore him. ("He's the only one besides mother who doesn't laugh at me because I make clothes," says the young boy in the clan.) We believe the attraction between him and Joss, and we observe that the family gives Eliot a last chance at a sort of parenthood before what he probably senses is an inevitable arrest.
Meanwhile, the proprietress of a chateau where the siblings lodge, Mlle Zisi (Danielle Darrieux), has tossed aside her lesbian lover for a fling with Eliot, who finds the hotel a convenient hideout from the cops. He won't tell Zisi where he goes each weekend, and has convinced her to refrain from accepting lodgers. Zisi is painfully vulnerable with Eliot, and imperious with others. She gets a taste of her own venom from the spurned Mme Corbet (Claude Nollier): "You pretend to be his wife, but he will never marry you -- never!"
This film captures shattering truths about people. We see the contrast between a lovesick Joss, wishing an evening never to end, and the expedient coupling of Zisi and Eliot ("How can you talk about money after last night?"). However, it isn't long before Joss is acting as miserably as everyone else, dropping that letter in the mailbox even after a life-altering kiss.
This is a movie also about disappearances, and their fateful consequences. The hospitalization of the kids' mother paves the way to knowledge for her brood, but of a kind she never planned. Eliot's vanishings to Paris keep Zisi in his thrall. And the tragic Paul (David Saire), whose parents before him disappeared, passes out of sight, too, after an incident of horrible judgment.
Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, I'm reminded of the zany Larry David movie "Whatever Works" (2009), in which he marvels at the sheer "chanciness of life."
Can we taste of life's riches -- without being selfish?