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| Monsieur Batignole | |||
“Gérard Jugnot is a prolific and revered comic actor in France and there are plenty of bleakly comic touches in this movie. Jugnot himself—portly, sweating and anxious—cuts a comic figure which looks like a French stereotype. But the film's caperish opening moments soon give way to a darker story. Batignole runs a family butchery in occupied Paris. It's July 15, 1942, the day before French police began the roundup of Jews who were taken to the Velodrome d'Hiver, a sports stadium, to await deportation…The film seems, like the comedies of Tati, for example, possessed of a specifically French sensibility and Anglophone audiences may squirm at times at the extraordinarily risky blend of comedy and clammy drama… Jugnot as director conveys with sidelong glances the terrible poignancy of shattered lives - the sight, glimpsed in passing, of a Jewish business' van, confiscated and repainted, speaks volumes. In the end, as the story of a man who describes himself as accidentally courageous, it is a modest and moving film.” – Peter Calder, NZ Herald |
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| France 2002 | |||
Director: Gérard Jugnot With: Gérard Jugnot (Edmond Batignole), Jules Sitruk (Simon Bernstein), Michèle Garcia (Marguerite Batignole), Jean-Paul Rouve (Pierre-Jean Lamour), Alexia Portal (Micheline Batignole), Violette Blanckaert (Sarah Cohen), Daphné Baiwir (Guila Cohen) 104 mins, DV (16:9) In French with English subtitles M adult themes Tauranga Film Society |
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