Children of the Marshland
France 1998
Reviewed by Ginette Vincendeau
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Provincial France, the 30s. Garris and Riton live in a marshland near a small town, doing such odd jobs as busking and selling flowers, frogs and snails. Riton drinks too much and would be unable to provide for his wife and three children without Garris, who settled in the area after World War I. During a brawl in a café, Riton unwittingly provokes boxer Jo Sardi, leading to the latter's imprisonment and ruining his career. Sardi vows to kill Riton when he comes out of jail.
Meanwhile, Garris and Riton lead their uneventful lives. They occasionally meet their learned bourgeois friend Amedée in town and visit an old lady with him. They befriend Pépé, a rich industrialist of modest origin, also from the area. The men bond despite their differences. Garris falls in love with young housemaid Marie, but she leaves town. Sardi comes out of jail looking for Riton. Pépé tries to warn Riton but dies of exposure in the snow. Sardi is on the brink of killing Riton when Riton's young daughter pushes Sardi into the lake. Riton saves Sardi's life and the two are reconciled. Garris leaves the area.
Review
Given the hit-and-miss rules that govern the distribution of French films in the UK, Les Enfants du marais may owe its release to the casting of former Manchester United footballer Eric Cantona as boxer Jo Sardi. Indeed, Cantona, here in a small but pugnacious part, will not disappoint his fans. Most of his appearances in the film show him ranting, kicking or threatening. Yet the film as a whole operates in a gentler, nostalgic mode.
Director Jean Becker has had a long and varied career in French mainstream cinema and advertising, directing (among others) a couple of Jean-Paul Belmondo adventure thrillers in the 60s. Over here, he is better known for the Vanessa Paradis/Gérard Depardieu drama Elisa and the psychological thriller L'Été meurtrier/One Deadly Summer. The latter was also scripted by thriller writer Sébastien Japrisot, here adapting a book by Georges Montforez. Becker's new film, however, has none of the suspense and plot twists typical of Japrisot's work. It is a nostalgic throwback to the cinema of Becker's father, the great Jacques Becker, director of the 50s classics Casque d'or and Touchez pas au grisbi (the French title, Les Enfants du marais, also recalls Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du paradis, 1945). The films of Becker père celebrate the old-fashioned values of popular communities and male friendship. Becker fils includes a knowing gesture towards his father when Garris in voiceover rants against his incompetent friend Riton - whom he will, however, never abandon - echoing Jean Gabin's fuming words about his own infuriating friend Riton in Touchez pas au grisbi. Alas, Jacques Gamblin (who plays Garris) is not Jean Gabin, Jean Becker is not Jacques Becker, and the values celebrated by Children of the Marshland seem stale and contrived rather than warm and vibrant.
The setting is, unusually for a French film, rather vague and the unidentified marshland underexploited, despite many references in the dialogue to the importance of nature and the seasons. Equally, the period is evoked only superficially (there is talk of Hitler at an engagement party). The flashback to the end of World War I and its trauma (a topic on which Japrisot has written a very good book) is promising but not followed up. The main problem, however, lies in the central couple of Garris and Riton. The casting unites good-looking, melancholy Gamblin with roly-poly comic Jacques Villeret (of Le Dîner de cons fame). It's a classic combination of types but the pair's antics are neither really funny nor very moving. And where the misogyny of male bonding was understated in 50s cinema, here it acquires a virulent twist. Women appear very rarely, but when they do they run the gamut of negative female stereotypes: Riton's wife is pure nagging harridan, Marie a coquette, Jo Sardi's girlfriend a faithless slut, Pépé's daughter a repressed killjoy. Meanwhile it's hard to find Riton's alcoholic slob charming or Garris' loyalty touching, and a moot point whether singing horrendously out of tune and catching hundreds of frogs are the most endearing pastimes, let alone spectacle.
André Dussollier as Amedée and, especially, Michel Serrault as Pépé are two of the film's saving graces, injecting warmth and subtlety into their flimsy characters, and Cantona cuts quite a dashing figure. In this respect, Becker's film does evoke classic French films and their roster of wonderful secondary roles given space by an unhurried narrative. Otherwise, in trying to recreate not only a period (the 30s) but also a type of film-making (the classic humanist French film), Becker has produced what is perhaps inevitably an unsuccessful pastiche of both.
Credits
- Adaptation/Dialogue
- Sébastien Japrisot
- Based on the novel
- Les Enfants du marais by
- Georges Montforez
- Director of Photography
- Jean-Marie Dreujou
- Editor
- Jacques Witta
- Production Designer
- Thérèse Ripaud
- Music
- Pierre Bachelet
- ©Films Christian Fechner/UGCF/France 2 Cinéma/UGC Images/Rhône Alpes Cinéma/K.J.B. Production
- Production Companies
- Christian Fechner presents a UGC/Fechner production with the participation of soficas Sofinergie 4 & Sofinergie 5/Region Rhône-Alpes/Centre National de la Cinématographie/Canal+
- Executive Producer
- Hervé Truffaut
- Production Manager
- Jean-Claude Bourlat
- Unit Production Manager
- Yves Hersen
- Unit Managers
- Vincent Barthélémy
- Jean Guiraud
- Jean-Claude Landon
- Animal Unit Manager
- Sandrine Morvan
- Location Managers
- Yves Lamercerie
- Brice Blasquez
- Sébastien Vieillard
- Post-production Supervisor
- Catherine Adart
- Assistant Directors
- Alain Olivieri
- Sylvia Allegre
- Olivier Falkowski
- Script Supervisor
- Brigitte Hédou-Prat
- Casting Director
- Jean-Paul Becker
- Animal Photography
- Laurent Charbonnier
- Steadicam Operator
- Patrick de Ranter
- Set Decorators
- Frédérique Hurpeau
- Annie Sénéchal
- Decorator
- Christine Rey
- Sculptor
- Bruno Margery
- Costume Designer
- Sylvie de Segonzac
- Wardrobe
- Sandrine Follet
- Key Make-up
- Françoise Chapuis
- Key Hair Stylist
- Agathe Dupuis
- Titles/Opticals
- Ercidan
- Music Performed by
- Harmonica:
- Thierry Crommen
- Piano:
- Jean-Michel Bernard
- Banjo:
- Claude Samart
- Accordion:
- Dominique Sucetti
- Music Performed by
- l'Orchestre Symphonique Européen
- Orchestrations
- Quentin Bachelet
- Bernard Levitte
- Mixer
- Didier Lizé
- Soundtrack
- "West End Blues" by Clarence Williams, Joseph Oliver, performed by Louis Armstrong; "Parlez-moi d'amour" by Jean Lenoir, performed by l' Orchestre de l'Association Harmonie de Trevoux; "Happy Birthday" by Patty S. Hill, Mildred J. Hill; "Le Mai de Clerieux" (trad), performed by Emmanuel Pariselle; "Les Patineurs (The Skaters) Valse, Op. 183" by Emile Waldteufel, performed by Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra, Alfred Walter; "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht" by Franz Gruber
- Sound
- Guillaume Sciama
- William Flageollet
- Co-mixage
- Marie Massiani
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Nadine Muse
- Dialogue Editor
- Mourad Louanchi
- Sound Effects
- Laurent Lévy
- Post-synchronization
- Michel Filippi
- Animal Handlers
- Michel Flaesch
- Jacky Vincent
- Cast
- Jacques Villeret
- Riton
- Jacques Gamblin
- Garris
- André Dussollier
- Amedée
- Michel Serrault
- Pépé
- Isabelle Carré
- Marie
- Eric Cantona
- Jo Sardi
- Suzanne Flon
- old Cri Cri
- Jacques Dufilho
- the old man
- Gisèle Casadesus
- Madame Mercier
- Roland Magdane
- Félix
- Elisabeth Commelin
- Marthe
- Julie Marboeuf
- Émilie
- Jenny Clève
- Berthe
- Philippe Magnan
- Laurent
- Jacques Boudet
- Tane
- Marlène Baffier
- young Cri Cri
- Romain Dreyfus
- Town Pierrot
- Jacques Chaillier
- Marais Pierrot
- Maxime Monsimier
- Jojo
- Anne Le Guernec
- Mireille
- Margot Marguerite
- the manager
- Mélanie Baxter Jones
- Catherine
- Fabienne Labanda
- Pierre Bianco
- Jacques Dynam
- Eriq Ebouaney
- John Fernie
- Patrick Lizana
- Christian Taponard
- Françoise Bertin
- Maguy Dussauchoy
- Liana Fulga
- Isabelle Sadoyan
- Antoine Chouzy
- Stéphane Kordylas
- Jean Maurel
- Denis Montagnol
- Henri-Edouard Osinski
- Charles Tordjman
- Bernard Villanueva
- David-Olivier Rion
- Certificate
- PG
- Distributor
- Gala Film Distributors
- 10,364 feet
- 115 minutes 10 seconds
- Dolby digital/Digital DTS sound
- In Colour
- Anamorphic [Panavision]
- Subtitles