Promise at Dawn

I enjoyed very much this film based on the novel "La Promesse de l'Aube " of Romain Gary. A beautiful story about the complicated and touching relationship of Romain and his mother Nina who wants that her son becomes the ambassador of France and a great writer.

So we follow Romain and Nina in Vilnius and later Varsaw, the childhood of Romain-the first love with Valentina-, the business of his mother and the antisemitism. The travel to Nice, the beginning of the writing,and then the Second World Wae- the troubles of Romain because of his Jew origin., Romain joining the French Liberation army, the stay in Africa and later his engagement in the French Liberation army.

I enjoyed very much the perfomances of Pierre Niney,Charlotte Gaisbourg, Didier Bourdon, Jean-Pierre Droussin and Catherine Mc Cormack.

A great story, well told and represented. A good movie starts in a great script. French cinema continues to bring us the finest art.

The demands in the name of love seem too harsh, even absurd. Maternal love is great, and so it is. But I don't think the maternal love in this film deserves to be publicized. The greatness here is entirely due to Roman's success. If Roman did not succeed, is there a circle in his maternal love. Roman's success depends on faith and luck. Mother's love is great, and it's hard to have a second Roman.

Based on novelist Romain Gary's biography,this is the second version of the writer's youth .In her husband Jules Dassin's 1970 movie, Melina Mercouri hammed it up,but did convince as this character of a Jewish mom ,and it was the main asset of this earlier work.That director ,in his last part of his career,was succumbing to the vices of European cinema of the era: the slow motion sequences ,which were very trendy then are almost unbearable today.Romain was played by no less than three different actors.

The same goes for the remake :a boy ,a teenager and a young man (Niney,thus,only appears in the second half);.Charlotte Gainsbourg reprises La Mère-Couri 's role and compares favorably with her performance ,less histrionic,but always omnipresent -her arrival at the base is worth the price of admission-,ambitious ,demanding ,almost in love with her son (one never sees her have an affair with a single man ,though some of them (the painter, portrayed by the always reliable Darroussin)woo her .

Longer than the first version (101 min) ,this one (125 min) sometimes drags on and seems a little patchy and desultory but it's inherent in any biography ;sex scenes are more explicit (the initiation scene with the unexpected mom because of the coach incident is featured in both movies) .

War scenes are much more developed than in the first adaptation ;it sometimes verges on ridicule : the aviator ,suffering from typhoid,crosses the hospital stark naked .

Two small details : two soldiers were actually denied their promotion,Romain was not the only one ,but it 's less storylike on the paper,let alone on the screen. The 250 letters mom supposedly wrote are pure fiction; when he was in Africa, a telegram was sent to Romain who knew his dear one was dead when he came back to France.

The prologue in Mexico ,a bit gaudy , is a bit derivative:how many biographies were filmed as flashbacks?

All in all, you should see this remake ,but mainly for miss Gainsbourg ,in one of her best parts.

NB: When the first version was released,Gary was still alive ;hence the necessity to treat his material more gingerly.

Very good dramatic comedy about the impressive life of Jewish writer and military pilot Romain Gary (Kacew), his relashionship with his crazy, controlling and abusive mother (he loved her, but I did not see a so bad mother since Brian de Palma's "Carrie") and anti-Semitism during and before World War II. Quite dark humor for narrating a glorious but tragic life.