La vida en el castillo

Another delightful French pastiche, this time set around the time of the D-Day landings in Normandy; a fine cast headed by Catherine Deneuve, Pierre Brasseur and Philippe Noiret lend themselves admirably to the spirit of the thing. LA VIE DE Château takes in everything from the issues of class difference (farm girl Deneuve is married to wealthy good-for-nothing Noiret), collaboration (Noiret's family flaunts its supposed Nazi sympathies for their own material gain while secretly despising their oppressors) and heroism (it's Noiret who ultimately emerges as the unexpected - and perhaps unwilling - hero, eventually winning back the straying affections of his wife). Director Rappeneau recently returned to the same stylistic territory and historical background with equally terrific results for his BON VOYAGE (2003).

2003 is a perfect time to talk about Rappeneau's directorial debut because he has now, 38 years later, returned to the subject of WW11 in 'Bon Voyage', which I have commented on in the appropriate place. Of course it helps any fledgling director to have Philippe Noiret and Catherine Deneuve co-starring in his first time at bat but, like virtually all French directors he had a tasty track-record as a screenwriter behind him - he had, in fact, co-scripted 'Zazie Dans Le Metro' five years earlier in which Noiret starred as a drag queen - and it shows in the way he handled this film. Something of a ground-breaker at the time - it wasn't 'done' to find charm, drollery, to say nothing of laffs in Occupied France til Rappeneau showed the way - it paved the way for so many others. Well served by his cast, especially the two principals La Vie de la Chateau is a delight from start to finish, a souffle lighter than air as only a French chef could concoct. With a revival long overdue any video/DVD copies lying around should be snapped up.

"La vie de château" is little known in the US, but it was popular in France and won the Prix Louis-Delluc. It's built around Catherine Deneuve as a farm girl who has married Jérome, the winded scion of a grand seigneurial family (Philippe Noiret), and is discontented as a result. Pent up in their crumbling château in Normandy, she longs for the high life of Paris. Her husband, though, seems pleased to slowly rot away, as long as the ancestral orchards keep producing the finest fruit in the world; he bears himself as the final fruit of a noble line. His widowed mother (Mary Marquet) lives with them, playing the piano with a lofty air while ceiling plaster falls into the wires. She dotes on her son, but can't help reminding him that he's not the man his father was. His father-in-law, a growling old peasant with a keen grasp of the situation (Pierre Brasseur), reminds him of the same thing. The château is mortgaged to the hilt, and the former tenant is in a position to buy it cheaply, and become the new seigneur. Into this set-up parachutes Henri Garcin as a member of the Resistance, sent to spy out the German troop placements in the neighboring countryside. For our Normandy farce is set in the spring of 1944. The ineffectual husband is indifferent to the German invaders, and unaware of the activities of the Resistance: we may have a small fable unfolding here. Both the German colonel and the French patriot want to dress Deneuve in finery and take her to the Paris of her dreams – but the sticking point is that her husband really does love her, and an unpredictable gallant lover awakens under his placid surface.

Deneuve has none of the usual technique needed for playing farce, but the serene quality of her beauty keeps her from straining at it. When the young wife's frustrations make her fly into anger over trifles, the flights are truly jarring and spiky; the comedy is in Noiret's limitless capacity for absorbing these darts – or is it limitless?

The fine score is by Michel Legrand.

Perhaps it was a misguided idea from the start to attempt to make a comedy set in German-occupied France in the last months of WWII (and to shoot it in black & white, for no discernible reason), but "La Vie De Château" is weak even on its own terms; any comedy, regardless of time period, is supposed to have more than three laughs in 90 minutes. This film has little to offer beyond Catherine Deneuve's exquisite beauty, and to be honest I struggled to even finish it. No traces of the director who would make the excellent "Cyrano" 24 years later here. ** out of 4.

This minor gem is a lightweight romance set during World War II in the French countryside. It struck me as unusual because I didn't expect a Gallic romantic farce that included Nazis. In any event, it's well played; Deneuve is at her most beautiful; and the lush, romantic music by Michel Legrand is beautiful, too. Nice.