This review was made following an afternoon screening at Cambridge Film Festival (September 2010): If you do not take to what, for me, is simply a gloriously delightful style of French film (very much in the spirit of a previous hit at the festival Conversations With My Gardener, whose name is even evoked by this feature's English title), my positive reception will not be understood. However, I gauge from the applause (at the re-run) that it was well received.
Nevertheless, although people might have laughed quietly to themselves at largely gentle humour (but interspersed with varying levels of sometimes overt discrimination and even abuse), and, unless one has half an ear to the original language, reading words off the screen can put one a beat or more behind, I judged that some of it was being lost.
What certainly also didn't come over in the subtitles was the old-fashioned purity of expression of Margueritte's French (and so the beauty that I heard in it as a contrast with Germain's and that of most of the others), and there is definitely nothing left of the original title's intimation of a mind that is lying dormant (until she awakes it). Other translations gave a different feeling to the content of the original dialogue, and one text that was recited aloud, not least when it had been shown as sought out as easier to read, seemed more opaque than the others.
There is much in common with Conversations, such as the generosity of the motives (and the utter lack of condescension where it most matters), and even the fact that both of the less well-educated characters have green fingers. (As in that case, I am inclined to look out the book from which this film was adapted.) There was additionally a similar feeling of hurt (though greater here) between comparing the results of different educations (and, in the case of Conversations, lifestyles), particularly one that had penalised Germain and ridiculed him time and again in front of everyone else, and continued to do so.
He was only to be redeemed, in the scope of our time with him, by the insight of the two women in his life, who could clearly see his generosity and loveableness for their true worth. In the case of each relationship, respect on both sides is felt for the other, and companionship and friendship are seen as valued responses to the sharing of experiences that have hitherto been alien to that person's world. Finally, though not wishing to push the resemblance too far, but there is a final (and crucial) link in the matter of inheritance, which, in the case of Conversations, brought about the circumstances of the story, and here altered them.
Each film shows something of what matters about being human, when the pettiness, anger and competitiveness of life are stripped away. I know that I will, as I did with Conversations, be coming back to My Afternoons, and I fully expect that attention to be well repaid.
Nevertheless, although people might have laughed quietly to themselves at largely gentle humour (but interspersed with varying levels of sometimes overt discrimination and even abuse), and, unless one has half an ear to the original language, reading words off the screen can put one a beat or more behind, I judged that some of it was being lost.
What certainly also didn't come over in the subtitles was the old-fashioned purity of expression of Margueritte's French (and so the beauty that I heard in it as a contrast with Germain's and that of most of the others), and there is definitely nothing left of the original title's intimation of a mind that is lying dormant (until she awakes it). Other translations gave a different feeling to the content of the original dialogue, and one text that was recited aloud, not least when it had been shown as sought out as easier to read, seemed more opaque than the others.
There is much in common with Conversations, such as the generosity of the motives (and the utter lack of condescension where it most matters), and even the fact that both of the less well-educated characters have green fingers. (As in that case, I am inclined to look out the book from which this film was adapted.) There was additionally a similar feeling of hurt (though greater here) between comparing the results of different educations (and, in the case of Conversations, lifestyles), particularly one that had penalised Germain and ridiculed him time and again in front of everyone else, and continued to do so.
He was only to be redeemed, in the scope of our time with him, by the insight of the two women in his life, who could clearly see his generosity and loveableness for their true worth. In the case of each relationship, respect on both sides is felt for the other, and companionship and friendship are seen as valued responses to the sharing of experiences that have hitherto been alien to that person's world. Finally, though not wishing to push the resemblance too far, but there is a final (and crucial) link in the matter of inheritance, which, in the case of Conversations, brought about the circumstances of the story, and here altered them.
Each film shows something of what matters about being human, when the pettiness, anger and competitiveness of life are stripped away. I know that I will, as I did with Conversations, be coming back to My Afternoons, and I fully expect that attention to be well repaid.