Whitech
It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.
Keeley Coleman
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
Patience Watson
One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.
MartinHafer
"The Grocer's Son" is a film that many folks will give up on, as it is slow and very deliberately paced. I know I was very tempted to turn off the movie and am glad I didn't. It is worth your time.When the film begins, Antoine's father has had a heart attack and is in the hospital. It soon becomes apparent that Antoine (Nicolas Cazalé) has only come to the hospital for his mother's sake...as long ago he left home and swore to stay away due to his relationship with his dad. Despite all this, he reluctantly agrees to leave the city and move back home, temporarily, to help his mother with the family business. I was surprised by this because although they own a small general store in the country, the business also has a small truck that travels about selling to the locals outside their homes. Antoine is terrible at his job. He is surly, bitter and a jerk. His lady friend Claire, is a very nice and sweet girl...but after a while Antoine's bitterness push her away. Is there any hope for Antoine or his really screwed up family?As I mentioned, this is a slow film...very, very slow. However, the story comes together very nicely and believably at the end...making the journey worth your time and trouble.
robert-temple-1
This is the first feature film directed by documentary film-maker Eric Guirado. For that reason it records its progress as it goes, rather methodically, like a doctor reading the rise in temperature on a thermometer. This results in the main character, Antoine, played by Nicholas Cazalé, being surly and unsympathetic for more than an hour before he begins to lighten up and become a bit human. Although that is the point of the story, one does tire of his ego-centred rudeness and lack of concern for others to the point where one is barely available for sympathy as he begins, slowly and painfully, to turn into a nicer guy under the softening influence of the quintessentially French countryside and its rustic inhabitants. The film is mostly shot in the foothills of the French Alps, and the scenery is really beautiful. (Guirado himself comes from the area.) Antoine is a renegade son of a bullying father who has fled to Paris long ago to live his own life, not very successfully. He has enough chips on his shoulders to supply a fish 'n' chips shop. He takes offence at everything, and is permanently aggrieved. His father has had a stroke and Antoine is summoned home to the small village from which he came by his mother, to help her run the small family grocery business, which includes a mobile van which takes groceries to people living far from any town, who are mostly elderly and are called 'les vieux' ('the old folks'). He is accompanied by a girl named Claire who has been living with him, but not as a girlfriend. She is played by Clothilde Hesme. Hesme was to appear later with Audrey Tautou, the Elf, in the amusing film HAPPY END (2009), and in the fascinating Raoul Ruiz TV mini-series MYSTERIES OF LISBON (2010), as Elisa de Montfort. She has very blue eyes, and an enigmatic set of expressions which often send mixed signals, thus conveying an unrelenting, continuous ambiguity. That makes her very good casting for a film where the girl's role is not meant to be all that clear. Is she or isn't she? Does she or doesn't she? She's perfect for that sort of thing. Daniel Duval plays the bullying patriarch who constantly criticizes and humiliates his son. With all these tensions going on, things get very, well, tense. At first Antoine is so obsessed with his anger and resentment that he barely sees the beautiful scenery and barely focuses on les vieux, who drive him into a rage when they cannot pay the full price for some petits pois and want a bit of credit 'until next time'. Antoine's father is extremely popular with them all because he has highly personalised and friendly relations with them all going back over the years. Antoine rubs all these people up the wrong way at first and everything is becoming disastrous. Claire helps to humanize him and eventually he is softened into realizing that les vieux are rather pathetic and very nice, that life is peaceful and can be enjoyed, and that the village and the van are not so degrading and exasperating for him after all. The theme of the film is thus how the foothills of the Alps and the eccentric locals who live there can slowly wear away at you like a creek and make you a smoother pebble in the stream of life. So if you stick with it, the film pays off and is well worth watching. But if you demand a thrill a minute, it's not for you. It is slow, steady, and can teach people a lot. Those of us who have lived far from a town know what it is like to expect the appearance of a van which saves us the trouble of driving for many miles for the simplest things, and whether it is 'the fish man', a travelling grocer as in this film, a roving butcher's van, or even a milkman, in 'remote parts' it becomes an event when the van turns up, and people become very jolly very quickly exchanging the latest gossip, and want to know what is happening with so and so down the road. What a pity all of these vans are vanishing, as the supermarkets gobble up all trade and roll out their carpet of mediocrity and dehumanised offerings, and even the women at the checkout are afraid to make a joke lest they lose their jobs for dallying. This film is all about dallying. Long may we dally, until it too is banned as politically incorrect, as so many once harmless jokes now are.
Richard Burin
Le fils de l'épicier/The Grocer's Son (Eric Guirado, 2007) traverses well-worn ground in an appealing way. Nicolas Cazalé is agreeably gruff as the titular character, the Prodigal Son returning to the family he left behind (You Can Count on Me, In My Father's Den), whose pastoral existence is in stark contrast with the hubbub of the metropolis (I Know Where I'm Going!, Local Hero, Doc Hollywood).Arriving with his almost-girlfriend, he takes on his ailing dad's rounds, finding both solace and frustration in the work. It's a bit erratic, with a couple of stretches that just consist of Cazale handing out food and an ending that's slightly rushed, but there are enough offbeat laughs and telling episodes to make it worthwhile. It's also a bit darker than you might expect, or at least more fraught.
hsernaker
A very nice film I think you'd like.... fine acting, terrific musical score, richly nuanced character interactions. The theme of personal growth and relationship redemption is strong and compelling. That said, this same theme both resonates with and is diluted by being juxtaposed as parallel to the urban vs bucolic dichotomy. This is unfortunate only to the extent that it is an incidental distraction to the character dynamics, and misleading as an undercurrent suggesting some inherently beneficent quality to rural areas resistant to modernity.The photography in itself is rather good but somehow I left feeling they could have done more with the panoramic vistas sensed in the background as well as to contrast the city vs country ambiance; somewhat better cinematography might have elevated this movie from really good to excellent. For me the film lacked perhaps the exuberance of a fine Amarone but 'tasted like a really good Cab'..One for your list of films to see..
