Partie de campagne
FR 40m Dir: Jean Renoir Key Cast: Sylvia Bataille
My schoolboy French was once again put to the test but fortunately this film by Jean Renoir is only forty minutes long. It was intended to be longer but bad weather put an end to production and after being filmed in 1936 it was finally released ten years later in this form.
A Parisian family take a day trip to the country and there Henriette (Sylvia Bataille) attracts two men who see to it that her father and his shop assistant Anatole are distracted. Henriette ends up on a boat with Henri and the pair have a brief romance. An epilogue show Henriette returning to the same spot some years later and bumping into Henri, only for him to find she has actually married Anatole.
It's such a charming and beautiful film. There's lots of shots of trees and the river and birds singing and it really does feel like a day in the country as a viewer. Henri and Rodolphe are really charming and you can see why eventually Henriette allows his advances.
The epilogue is heart-breaking. It's now a pretty common film trope to have an epilogue showing that the central couple of the film didn't actually end up together and like here it's usually a jolt as the romance of the film is wiped away by the reality of life.
I'm intrigued how much more Renoir would have added to this because I think it's pretty much perfect as it is. An expertly captured, timeless romance juxtaposed with that jolt of reality in the epilogue.
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