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The father of my children
Genre: Drama
Death, family, film, Munich Film Festival 2009
homage to a film producer
This is an enormously difficult issue: how does a family react when the father suddenly shoot? Mia Hansen-Love tells of this calamity with admirable tenderness. She describes the different types of grief work with an emotional density that is very low and thus the more natural. Although it may sound strange: For much of this is a life-affirming film.
Canvel Gregoire (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) loves his life: his job as a film producer as well as his wife and three daughters. It is bubbling with energy, is no difficulty in the way and has, despite high occupational exposure is always a big heart and an open ear. At the same time by several mishaps his company falls into the red. Gregoire is (very) long on the principle of hope. And when the bank finally turning off the tap, he drives a bullet in the head.
There are a number of beautiful scenes that involve themselves very sensitive to the feelings of grief. In one of them, we see almost nothing, because the power supply is interrupted one evening when the family is together with a good friend. The surprising darkness in the whole area gives rise to the idea of going on the road and look to the stars. The mood is good, but not boisterous, cheerful and melancholy at the same time. A magical moment in which the commemoration of the dead becomes tangible in the visual language.
Director Mia Hansen-Løve found a number of such settings, where we understand everything without being spoken. She tells unspectacular, almost daily, but doing very intense. Especially in the cut is understandable, going through the survivor’s emotional development. In moments of quiet desperation following scenes, which show that life goes on, even if such a phrase meant that the emotions can not reproduce.
Perhaps the director and screenwriter is the author succeeded so well because they close turn true in this fate. The film is adapted from the figure Canvel independent Parisian producer Humbert Balsan, elected in the February 2005 suicide. With him, the director has in her first all is forgiven worked for a year. The external facts of the film are therefore broadly in line with reality, the psychology of family relations on the other hand free to develop. When the screenplay was finished, it has the widow Humbert Balsan, although read. But she has the independence of the fictional text completely accepted.
Mia Hansen-Love said she was not the father of my children / Le père de mes enfants planned as a tribute to Humbert Balsan. But in a sense, she has this producer but a monument. For so sensitive and so warm is rarely a producer in a film has been described. This man is anything but a money bag. He is shown as a man who loves the cinema and even after so many years can inspire a good script. Not because it promises a blockbuster. But simply because it is well taken, and from life. Just as this film.
(Peter Gutting)
Title: The father of my children Original Title: Le père de mes enfants Country of production: Germany, France Year of production: 2009 (# ) Length: 112 (Min) of material: color film rental
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