Mikado

The subject may seem off the beaten track but it is not so.

Two movies were made dealing with the Fortin affair "la belle vie " and "vie sauvage" :the father and his two sons were "on the run" from 1997 to 2009;for the record ,the "guilty" father was sentenced to two months imprisonment without remission. The father claimed that his sons were carefully taught but it seems that one of the children could barely read when their escape ended.

'Mikado" deals with a similar subject , though the mother is also "on the run" ; it should be pointed out that this time it is a fiction and it shows ;the beginning promised a good movie,taking advantage of the lovely Provence landscapes. Mikado is a tormented soul ,a former child in care (in state custody);his mother -who appears towards the end - abandoned him,and the people of the special residential school ( present on a tape during the travesty of a trial)were mean and cruel. But he's proud of his family ,his daughter Nuage (=cloud) and his son who takes a back seat to her.

Now on the run,the family winds up in the country house of a French teacher and then a spate of clichés begins : he's a widower , his daughter has everything a girl can have but is of course grumpy and unsatisfied; Nuage ,although she never goes to school ,is better at French than the teacher's students;in the geography class ,she shines and would shine even more if her book was updated;fortunately ,there's no maths lesson, for she would teach her mates to solve a quadratic equation!

That Nuage longs for a "normal" life , that she wants to go to Jr High is legitimate ; but her father falls off his pedestal ; besides the mother ,who plays the piano quite well -and it's a woman who leads a bohemian life!-,seems to have a crush on the teacher and a taste for a family life in a nice comfy house;the poor father appears before the (all female) court,and they have no pity for the poor daddy who giggles during his lawyer 's plea ,probably the right thing to do when you deal with privileged people who do not know what it is to have got a raw deal.

The principal is moving , and ,considering the weakness of the screenplay ,and the pathetic happy end ,he must be praised .

NB : "Mikado" = jackstraws.

A social film par excellence, Mikado takes us into a world filled with sincerity and good intentions. Here, marginality is portrayed with a tender and caring perspective. The adventures of this modest family make us reflect on the state of our society. Broken by life, these four individuals manage to coexist, thanks to a happy accident, with a teacher and his daughter. The latter live peacefully, but also with the sorrow of losing the woman of the household. Despite a difficult integration, these people form, together, a semblance of a family. However, reality will knock on the door of this illegal, yet perfectly successful, union. The high-level cast makes the whole story incredibly believable and captivating. We are in agreement with both the introduction and the conclusion.