The Cinematheque

“The self-excoriation hits the heart directly … Le garçu became notorious as one of the decade’s best and most shamefully undistributed imports.”

Michael Atkinson, Village Voice

Maurice Pialat’s final film, and his fourth with actor Gérard Depardieu, marks a return to the more directly autobiographical mode of the director’s earlier works, and offers a troubling self-critique of father-son relations and male emotional inadequacy. Depardieu plays Gérard, a bullying, self-absorbed Parisian professional who purports to adore his three-year-old son Antoine, but who clearly resents the intense mother-child bond that Antoine shares with Sophie (Géraldine Pailhas), Gérard’s estranged (and much younger) wife. Gérard’s efforts to assert his paternal rights and be part of his son’s life are clumsy, ill-timed, and disruptive, and seem to stem from dubious motives. Meanwhile, the impending death of Gérard’s father dredges up memories of that difficult father-son relationship. Pialat’s concluding work, moving back and forth in time in deliberately disorienting fashion, was inspired by the birth (when Pialat was in his mid-60s) of his only child Antoine, who plays young Antoine here.

In French with English subtitles

“With his uncommon sense of intimacy and ability to keenly negotiate the nuances of human behavior, Pialat unfolds an unassumingly devastating tale of misplaced passions.”

Jordan Cronk, Brooklyn Magazine