Une semaine de vacances

For me, Bertrand Tavernier is the greatest French cinema director of the last 30 years. His films always have that real great sense of reality. It's also got creativity and intelligence. As I was watching fragile Nathalie Baye in this film, I was thinking what Hollywood would have done with that kind of story. The teacher will have face adversity and

realise that her duty is to carry on, even if she's not made for this work. It will have violons and tears. Here, Nathalie Baye said no to all that, and we are very happy for her. For 1 hours 45 minutes, Tavernier makes us know the deep feelings of that woman. The logic says she will quit. And so she does and we're happy. Watch good work from veteran comic Michel Galabru, in a serious part.

Here's another strong piece of work from a giant in French cinema, Bertrand Tavernier who is always on the alert to pore over various social problems who are still topical many years after the shootings of the films. "Une Semaine De Vacances" deals with education, a domain Tavernier will explore again twenty years later with "Ca Commence Aujourd'Hui" (1999).

The first thing that springs to mind is that by discovering this wondrous movie, one realizes that Tavernier uses education to make the portrait of a French teacher, Laurence acted with sensitivity by Nathalie Baye. The latter, one morning decides not to go to her secondary school after a breakdown. Her doctor (Philippe Léotard) gives her one week's rest during which she will review her career, even her life. As she hangs around with her lover Pierre (Gérard Lanvin), family and friends and makes new acquaintances, numerous questions, doubts and fears haunt her: did she really want to devote her life to teaching? Is she reliable enough to sustain interest amid her students? Should she have children with Pierre? Through her personal quest and a fragmented narration, Tavernier seizes the opportunity to make a mixing of different issues about education both from teachers but also between parents and children (Michel Galabru and his son with whom his relationships are rather blighted and there's a Philippe Noiret cameo whose son is in prison: it's a nod to Tavernier's first film: "l'Horloger De Saint Paul" (1974)). Other points involved are loneliness, old age (Laurence's old female neighbor), doubt (one of Laurence's students doesn't trust in herself while one of her colleagues puts her teaching career to an end because she's fed up with the incessant changing reforms in education) and different steps in the life of a woman: as I previously said, Pierre is craving for children but Laurence is undetermined about this.

So, education isn't only at the core of "une Semaine De Vacances" but one theme among several ones that are explored in the space of one week. There's a lot of food for thought, reflection and at the end of the viewing, one feels much more clever and available to have a look at the world that surrounds us. It's bracing cinema as we would like to watch it more often. God bless Bertrand Tavernier!

Laurence (Nathalie Baye), thirty one years old, is a high school French teacher in Lyon. She has a good relation with her students, genuinely cares for them and they appreciate her efforts. She is reasonably attractive, charismatic and socially adept with neighbors and colleagues (one of them, a woman endowed with a oversized sense of humor is her best friend). She gets along well with her parents, which are aging in apparent harmony in a small village nearby and even with her ne'er-do-well brother Jacques. Her boyfriend Pierre is at times overbearing and unsubtle, but sincerely loves her and dreams of having a child with her. At times, he seems to know her better than she herself does. Her friend urges her to formalize her relationship with Pierre and start a family before her biological clock winds down.

All of this changes one morning, when Laurence has a near panic attack, is unable to face her class and misses school. She is given a week's vacation to sort out her (unexplained) problems. She reexamines her life in a new and rather negative light; in spite of her efforts her student's writing is full of cliches and platitudes, a neighbor responds improperly to her kindness and she tries clumsily to find a pretext to break up with Pierre. At this point, order and purpose disappear and we are faced with the chaos of real life; motivations are unclear or missing, actions have unexpected reactions and plans seem not to work any longer. Whether Laurence will strike a new path or go back to her previous life after the week's vacation is left open.

The movie rests squarely on Baye's shoulders; she is in almost every scene. She does an excellent job. The other actors are at the same level, among them Tavernier regular Philippe Noiret in a short role. The script is spare and (as the movie requires) does not attempt to weave a conventional plot. A successful movie.

"Une Semaine De Vacances" (1980) is not a film for every taste or mood. Do not expect a strong narrative - in fact, there is not the tiniest shred of plot during its 100 minutes. The celebrated writer-director Bertrand Tavernier is not a notable visual stylist, either. What he is, though, is a poet of the everyday, the banal. It's a small, quiet, subtly melancholic film about depression. Not an official follow-up to Tavernier's own "L'Horloger de Saint-Paul" (1974), though it does briefly catch-up with Philippe Noiret as the same character from that film, and it is also - refreshingly - set in Lyon. Nathalie Baye is one of the most talented French actresses of her generation and, despite what her character says at one point, very pretty, too: her smile lights up the whole screen. There are a couple of terrific songs, too. **1/2 out of 4.

Today, I'm not an "expert" of the work of Mr. Bertrand Tavernier. But this movie gave me a great desire to be more interested in his work.

It's a very good film about the questions, doubts, fears, anxieties that adults can feel socially and in particular through the role of Miss Laurence Cuers (Nathalie Baye), young teachers. Besides this social and depressive anxiety feeling that emerges, the film criticizes the French National Education, which thirty years later, has the same fundamental flaws by the national education process itself and even the general contemporary cultural environment, which on this point, if I allow myself, get worse.

A beautiful story and a great accomplishment captivate us throughout the film, helped by a distribution well served by Nathalie Baye and Gerard Lanvin and energized by Michel Galabru and Philippe Noiret. And the action take place in Lyon (France) is often nice to see another town than Paris in the French cinema.

A good film very interesting and rewarding.

jelios

jelios@hotmail.fr