User reviews

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

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.

"The Town is Quiet" is a plaintive and somber look at the lives of several ordinary people who by choice or by chance find extraordinary solutions to their ordinary problems. Set in Marseilles, this typically fatalistic French flick weaves an austere story around loosely interconnected characters including a taxi driver, a fish packer, a bar owner, a drug addicted mother, etc. as it takes on issues from drugs to politics to assassination...etc. sans the tinsel and sensationalism of the usual Hollywood fare. Not likely to have broad appeal, this 2+ hour long subtitled film will be most appreciated by realists with a taste for French cinema. (B)

Undoubtedly this is a well made movie but... why does it have to be so heavy and dark?

"La ville est tranquille" means the town is quiet, but every character suffers and looks unhappy. All kinds of problems are there: prejudice against immigrants, unenployment, solitude, drugs, murder, prostitution, boredom.

We are led to believe les marseillais changed "liberté, egalité, fraternité" for misery, hopelessness and solitude.

The only sweet moments in the movie are when people are making music. Beyond music there's no salvation? I doubt it. Art helps a lot, but it's not enough. We need hope, love, good sense, and books, and movies which give them to us.

Forget Marseille! Come to Rio! Here we have violence, drugs and poverty but we can dance, sing and laugh (at least at ourselves...)

A very humanistic film. The persons appearing are really of flesh and blood. Marseille and even France is described as a stagnating society where fascism and racism is increasing. The old methods of the socialist/communist movement to improve the living conditions are generally regarded as obsolete. This is of course a very pessimistic view. But in the same time we feel that the film is taking side for the oppressed persons. Besides the misery we also meet men and women with warm hearts. The way the persons appear and how the story is told is so captivating that this must be regarded as one of the great films this year.

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.

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).

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!

In the contemporary Marseilles, Michèle (Ariane Ascaride) is a worker in the fishing market. She supports her family, composed by her unemployed husband, her addicted daughter Fiona (Julie-Marie Parmentier) and her granddaughter Ameline. Fiona prostitutes to buy drugs. Paul (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) is a stevedore, who betrays his colleagues and the union in a strike and buy a taxi with his indemnity. Gérard (Gérard Meylan) is a mysterious owner of a bar. Abderramane (Alexandre Ogou) is a black man who left jail and has an affair with a bourgeois. The lives of these characters are interconnected along the story. This movie is about ordinary people and touches in serious wounds in most of the worldwide societies, like unemployment, drugs, violence, crime, prostitution, prejudice against immigrants, loneliness, racism, low salaries, corrupts politicians. There is one particular scene that really touched me, when Michèle comments that only books have happy end. The title "The Town is Quiet" is very ironical and unfortunately the plot shows reality. I do not know if Robert Guédiquian wants to give some hope to the viewer, with that boy magnificently playing the piano he has finally bought in the end, but I found the story very bitter and pessimist. The direction and the performance of the cast are outstanding, and the soundtrack is excellent, highlighting Janis Joplin singing 'Summertime' and 'Cry Baby'. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): 'A Cidade Está Tranquila' ("The Town is Quiet")

This is a production not so much of the French film industry as the Marseille `film co-operative' headed by Robert Guédiguian (`Marius et Jeanette', `A la place du cour'). The same group have been making low-budget films on the theme of working class life for 20 years, and on the evidence of this one they are just getting better. What distinguishes their films is not so much the left –wing viewpoint mixed with obscure French philosophy (sorry M. Foucault) both of which are present, but an interesting combination of super-realist, almost documentary presentation and a decidedly melodramatic storyline.

In this film Ariane Ascaride plays a woman in her late thirties, old before her time, who is the sole support of her family (hubby has been out of work for three years). She toils by night in the fish markets, but this is not enough. Her 16 year old daughter, Fiona (Julie-Marie Parmentier) has already both a baby and a serious heroin addiction. After finding her daughter doing oral sex for money in the living room of their tiny flat, Michèle goes on the game herself, with no great success, although she does enlist the rather dopey Paul (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), a docker turned taxi-diver, as a regular customer. She turns to an old acquaintance, Gérard (Gérard Meylan), to supply her with heroin for Fiona. Meanwhile, Viviane (Christine Brucher), a drama teacher from a more refined neighbourhood, becomes involved with Abderramane, (Alexandre Ogou) a young black ex-con she had met while teaching a group of prisioners. Needless to say, things do not go smoothly. The storylines are topped and tailed by the quest of a Armenian immigrant boy for a decent piano to match his precocious talent.

The film is beautifully crafted; the various stories are brought together in a powerful and shocking conclusion. The scenes between mother and daughter are painful to watch, but justifiably so. Their situation is really not much to do with politics and Foucault, after all drugs plague the middle class as well, but Michèle has only her daughter. Pitched against the personal tragedy there is the plight of the workers as a whole; cast out of employment by mechanisation on the docks they are driven into the arms of the neo-fascists, to whom, of course, they are mere cannon–fodder. But the political viewpoint of the film is suggestive rather than strident, more a background to the personal dramas than the main theme, which what happens to personal relationships when put under unbearable pressure.

Despite the drama and tragedy, there is some subtle humour in the film. Where a flashback sequence is required at one point the director uses a clip from a movie made by him 20 years ago which happens to feature the same actors. There is the bumbling but kind-hearted cabbie, his retired left-wing parents and Michèle's husband to provide some amusement also. The look and feel of Marseille is conveyed beautifully; this reviewer last visited the place 25 years ago and got the distinct feeling that the tatty but colourful town of those days is now distinctly uglier and a great deal more dangerous. Guédiguian, however, has not given up on the place and he and his troupe continue to tell compelling stories of Marseille life.

From the opening shot, a magnificent panoramic panning view of Marseilles, to the completely unexpected ending, I was captivated by this film.

In the majority of gritty realist dramas, I find myself after a while feeling not entirely sympathetic to the characters, but in this one, I really felt for their predicaments, especially Michele and the bar-owner.

The film recorded the characters' actions in a refreshingly non-judgemental way, even the self-inflicted pain they cause and the way the characters use each other for their own ends. It seemed to be saying that this is the way humans act, good and bad,and all of us, including the viewer, are capable of both.

Well-acted and thought-provoking throughout, although uncomfortable viewing at times. I loved the way that after particularly heavy scenes, the director returns us fleetingly to the panoramic view of Marseilles - it put everything in context for me.

Definitely recommended.

The best film I saw in the last year. A magnificent,sombre,sometimes distressing essay on the stresses of globalisation on urban and especially working class family life. A wonderful panorama of Marseille opens the film and anticipates its themes. The acting of a large ensemble(of Altmanesque proportions) is stunning. Music is used to counterpoint action and offers a final hint of something like hope. The several plot strands cohere skillfully in a superb and important film

'La Ville est tranquille', possibly a pun with 'Life is beautiful' ('La Vie est belle' in French), is a movie that confirms former ideas of director Robert Guediguian but in a new, dark style. Those who remember the pretty love story of low class people 'Marius in Jeannette' will be astonished by the maturity of this movie. The same elements, more or less, are here : location (Marseilles), sun, possible or impossible love affairs, racism, violence, addiction to drug and prostitution. But the director does not underline a love affair, he simply focuses on the ordinary tragedies of ordinary people. How we can go through a tragedy just withouth feeling it is possible to do things another way, to have another life - this movie is just about that. It is impossible to escape from one's life and from one's recordings, this can be the moral of this dark tale. As the director puts also several doses of black, desperate humor in several scenes, the audience can breathe and laugh and forget a certain clumsiness in some dialogues. The memorable last sequence is very surprising, and its strong lyricism makes the movie just unforgettable.

I guess Robert Guidiguian loves his wife Ariane Ascaride because he photographs her so lovingly but he sure likes to make her suffer. In the only film I can recall off the top of my head in which she had both a husband, child and stable family relationship (the superb Marie-Jo and her 2 loves) she was unable to settle for this and had to take a lover. Normally, as here, she is unhappy in her relationship - assuming she has one and is not a single mother. Here she is really up against it; married to a waste of space who hasn't worked since Ludivine Sagnier made a movie with her clothes on, working herself all night at the fish market, caring for her teenage single mother and junkey with it daughter and getting insults for her pains, and finally turning tricks herself to pay for the monkey on her daughter's back. Against all the odds this is actually a Joy to watch because Ascaride is so luminescent and just one smile can light up Marseilles. As usual the director is flogging his pet hobby-horse and by now he really COULD train a pig to encapsulate it via the refrain Nobody Knows The Truffles I've Seen. For all that he does manage a light touch and most of the vignettes come off thanks to his repertory company of first-rate actors. As long as this cat keeps on churnin em out I'll keep getting it up at the box-office and you can't say fairer than that. 8/10

The hallmark of great directors is their ability to convey a sense of the sacred quality of what we are shown on screen. Guediguian achieves this here with his skillful interweaving of his characters' (largely sordid) lives on the backdrop of his beloved city. Even the least of these people is not beyond the possibility of redemption; Ariane Ascaride's role as the mother of a single-mother heroin addict is particularly powerful. A beautiful film shot with great tenderness.

A socialist indictment of capitalism, this study of the downtrodden is nevertheless worth your time for its' superlative acting, veracious settings and pedestrian direction. Taking the perspective that the overwhelmed are symbolic of the public and thus indicative of the status quo in contemporary France, this film takes great pains to prove its anti-nationalistic viewpoint. France for the French is faux pas. Multiculturalism is magnifique, and those that disagree are canaille.

Negligent of the notion that France might suffer under a socialist regime plagued by rampant third world immigration the director seeks to engender compassion for the afflicted. The idea that even a stifled laissez-faire market economy might be the cause for the employment of the remaining ninety-percent of the population and the incentive for such mass immigration is ignored so that the viewer can focus without distraction on those caught in the crossfire of free trade with other 'unfree' nations.

For all those who understand why market economies give rise to the greatest good for the greatest number, La Ville est Tranquille is fundamentally instructive of the socialist mind-set. Pointing solely to failure, coincident with its' expert use of emotional rhetoric, score a powerful tool for the manipulation of even the most scholarly of audiences.

Viewed as a work of art this film will not disappoint. Taken without Cabernet you may be cross.