La ville est tranquille

I have JUST seen this film - literally an hour ago and was curious to come to IMDb and see what others thought because I really knew very little about this film before I went to see it. Basically it had an 8:30 pm showtime and that worked out better than other movies and their showtimes so there I was. I felt the film really had trouble finding it's footing in the first twenty minutes. The director was obviously building blocks and setting things up but I was pretty uninvolved, but then, once all these characters' lives start to intersect and the stories start to build, the film just grips you and won't let go. Not in any thriller kind of way, but in a very believable, yet depressing, but human, real life way. The director trusts his story and actors so much (the acting is top notch) that he just lets the camera stay still and show you what happens. Now, if this film was just bleak and nothing else, well, then I probably would have hated it, but there are real moments of true, selfless love and even at the end, signs of hope and beauty that makes the movie special. I could see how many people might dislike the film and even walk out in the beginning, but Overall, the film packs a punch, a wild emotional punch, but like many great dramas, it leaves you thinking a great deal about life and society and mankind (good and bad).

One is used to British director's Leach and Loach concerning furious films about the working class, but Robert Guédiguian beats them. Not that his fury is lesser, but it's more quiet and therefore maybe more effective. This is about Marseille working class, drawn down in every aspect because of the globalization and a capitalism which is stronger and more destructive than for many decades. Even the conventional left-wing politicians seem to have abdicated completely and that is why Le Pen is very popular among these people. If you see this movie you indeed might understand why.

Beside the critic of capitalism and especially it's maybe most disgusting form, the drug trade, there is also drama here. You get really engaged in ten people's life and the people are not uncomplicated, "although" they are working class. The acting is marvelous, especially from Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Gérard Meylan.

See this one. It's almost a masterpiece

An excellent movie about real life. Desperate life stories mixed with some uplifting details. Moving and real. You shouldn't watch it, tough, if you're in a bit of a depressive mood because the uplifting moments are rather far in between. The hopelessness of heroin drug-addiction is shown very powerfully. Maybe a tick too hopeless, though... Still, even though I wasn't in the best of moods when I watched it, I did enjoy the experience quite a lot.

For a lot of cine buffs ,Marseille evokes the Pagnol Trilogy "Marius" ("Marius et Jeanette,get it?) "Cesar" and "Fanny".But be here now.This is 2000,no longer the thirties."La ville est tranquille" is a thoroughly contemporary movie,the despair of which sometimes recalling such works as "Rosetta".

Actually,it recalls in its form,Julien Duvivier's work,his movies made up of sketches particularly "sous le ciel de Paris"(1952) when all the subplots came together in an almost seamless whole.And as for despair

,Duvivier's movies were pessimism flesh on the bone. Guédiguian's story is more realist,more loachesque ,less melodramatic maybe less storybook or lyrical too.But that does not make a great difference:Duvivier and Kenneth Loach are influences every director can be proud of.

The backbone of "la ville est tranquille" (what an euphemism!) is a mother's struggle with her daughter's addiction,filmed with a realism hard to match.This is an absurd fight,because she's alone -she goes as far as prostituting herself to buy drugs-and because she actually helps her daughter in her fall.

But there are a lot of subplots,most of them as absorbing as the main story :sometimes they interfere with it .The taxi driver sequences,for instance ,do not seem to have a lot to do with it,but after a while a strong connection appears.And before the meeting,we already know the character:a man who 's not found a woman who's got what it takes,he's an old bachelor whose father and mother are longing to see him settled down.these parents are the only characters that have got something of Marcel Pagnol,they are definitely people of the past,not only because they are old,but because class struggle which they championed has become a thing of the past:the sequence in the taxi when the driver sings Pottier's "l'Internationale" in several languages is revealing for that matter.

Mini subplots give the movie substance:a meeting with a disquieting far right leader has a strong contemporary feel:"we like the Aliens,but we do prefer the French (of French extraction).Only the bourgeois couple and its sentimental -and intellectual - problems are irrelevant.

spoilers spoilers spoilers "La ville est tranquille" manages to give the audience a good dose of optimism though.one of the opening shots a young boy playing the piano in order to buy one :he's an Alien too and this vision is almost surrealist.At the very end of the movie ,when the audience seems to have lost any hope,a truck brings the piano to the child prodigy who begins to play.Then a crowd (of rejected?) gathers and ,for a while ,forgets all about its burden. end of spoilers

If there had been any doubts ,this movie finally and firmly placed R.Guédiguian among the greatest,most ambitious directors contemporary French cinema has produced.

A superb film dealing with some of the sensitive issues in France today. I would recommend this to anyone who has a rose tinted view of la belle vie en France as it does not pull any punches when dealing with social issues faced by many - not just in France but in much of the western world.

I watched this film in it's native French language so I may have missed some of the nuances but nonetheless it had the power to affect me and make me quite painfully aware of the issues shown.

Having visited the beautiful tourist side of Marseilles this film, and seen it as a back drop to this drama, the film presented a side I haven't seen before but could relate to through the careful placing of landmarks. It's a pity that we don't see films like this on British TV too often or at a watchable hour!