Filmed on location in an Italian town destroyed by an earthquake, "pour un sourire"belongs to the kind of movies which is easy to admire but very hard to like ,par excellence the art house cinema,influenced by early works by Alain Resnais ,based on a novel called " saute Barbara" (jump, Barbara ; it hints at a jumping rope ).
Bruno Cremer , cast against type for he is known for his parts of manly military man , par excellence the firebrand , portrays here a desperate deserter , who has lost the track of time (hence the comings and goings between present and past ;or is it present and future?) and who wanders in ruins ,holding a little girl's hand ,a little girl who might replace the one he might have lost in the bombing ; the baffled soldier cannot relate to the nightmarish world which surrounds him : he only speaks to a man eating canned sardines (Philippe Clay) ,but when he 's in a huge hall where refugees gather, showing their papers to a faceless clerk behind a desk , searching for relatives or a place to live (or to hide), he 's like a sleep walker ; the movie creates a hypnotic effect ,like in Resnais's early efforts ,but it may also remind you of Robert Enrico's unsung masterpiece "au coeur de la vie" (a segment of which "la rivière du hibou" aka "an occurence at Owl Crick bridge "was included in "the twillight zone" series): the last sequence notably. François De Roubaix, who was Enrico's favorite composer ,wrote the score. Marina Vlady 's appearances as the late wife are brief and ghostly .
