Jean de Florette (dir. Claude Berri, 1987) — Review
The life-giving properties of water and well-meaning delusions of the urban middle class make a mean pair of engines for the plot of Jean de Florette, the classic ‘80s moral fable that lured countless British tourists to Provence. Despite its initially lush, quirky spin on the 1920s farming life, the course of Claude Berri’s melodrama — in which the theft of water comes to encompass the theft of joy, hope, and other brighter aspects of human nature — has disheartening relevance to Europe a century on.
We first encounter a pair of grubby French rustics — wily old bachelor César ‘Le Papet’ Soubeyran (Yves Montand) and his rodent nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) — plotting over the niceties of wife-hunting, carnation-farming, and their internecine feud with the neighbouring landowner. Having shaken the latter out of a tree and to his doom, they find themselves with a new, unexpected foe in their orbit: Jean de Florette, a hunchbacked ex-tax collector played by Gerard Depardieu, who arrives with his beautiful wife and child and big dreams of a rabbit farm.
Not only Jean’s trusty harmonica but his bold agricultural designs raise tensions with the neighboring peasantry. Honking out Verdi’s ‘'Forza del Destino’, with a wagonload of husbandry self-help books in tow, Jean counts on the presence of a well on his late mother’s property — the very well which the Soubeyrans have dammed up for their own benefit. The noble Jean and his (even nobler) mule keep trekking miles to get a few buckets of water from a nearby spring, guarded by a kindly Italian-gypsy couple who delight Jean’s florid romantic soul as much as they disgust the locals’. Alas, the water cannot suffice to save Jean from either the machinations of his neighbors or the drought that descends on his once-fruitful enterprise.
Berri throws suspense to the wind, instead standing back to admire the stunning landscape and his protagonist’s guileless march into oblivion. Poor Jean; had he been born a few decades later, he could have carved out a thriving career in the ‘incompetent city dweller goes farming’ media niche mined so fruitfully by Paris Hilton and Jeremy Clarkson. Alas, his neighbours prove far less accommodating.
The Punch-and-Judy level characterisation between the holy fool Jean and the pernicious Papet - a relentlessly showy Yves Montand, enjoying a selection of jaunty hats- works in the context of the film’s abstract moral grounding. Our protagonist has much in common with the gigantic, docile rabbits he drops into boxes to couple with each other (in unexpectedly graphic detail). Despite his biblical suffering, this sweethearted lunk resolutely refuses the call to arms, accepting clanger after clanger, including a boules ball lobbed by a malignant villager, without protest.
Equally, viewers can hardly ascribe the actions of the neighbours, or the village at large to evil- just the classic combination of pariochal greed and pettiness. Over on the neighbouring farm, nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) possess the only real power to surprise, with intimations of morality flickering behind the bad teeth and the ratty cunning. Ugolin experiences a tragi-comic yet oddly relatable revelation- the scale of the unplanned consequences of Papet’s shabby trick. Hardscrabble and fond of the local prostitutes he may be, but he certainly doesn’t set out to kill the city man; indeed, they forge a heartwarming bromance, complete with deliveries of homegrown produce.
In any case Jean’s own failings seem less forgivable: Depardieu does a predictably convincing job of portraying a man who spends money too freely, drinks too heavily and makes some outlandish business decisions.
Jean’s incompetence with the farm equipment admittedly stems in part due to the lack of help he receives from his neighbours- and despite his Lear-like rebuke of the Almighty in a sirocco, the real traitors here are indeed his earthly foes. In the world of Jean de Florette, the nasty and cunning bumpkins take the pure of heart to the cleaners; the innocent city slickers easily identified by their beatific, slightly bovine expressions and inability to adapt and thrive. We long for Jean’s beautiful, long-suffering wife (Elisabeth Depardieu) to snap and tell her husband to go back to the desk job. Instead, she suffers and suffers, albeit exquisitely, and as the tale ploughs on to its inevitable conclusion.
