still a tragedy

All those years ago when it came out, I went to see Jean de Florette. It was the huge film of the moment, and of course my love for Gerard Depardieu* is possibly almost as legendary as Dippydoo himself, so off I went. But dear God. I know all the dramatic theories about tragedy and catharsis and all that, right, but the film was so bloody depressing that when the sequel Manon des Sources came out, no matter how much my friends told me it somehow "all got better," I refused to see it. I was too traumatised. An d anyway, he was already dead: what's better?

Well, tonight I turned on the television (remember, this is the new Ms Baroque, who stays in and watchers telly instead of going out or doing anything really useful and productive or even, actually, fun) and what were they showing but Jean de Florette? And your correspondent kind of misses boys, and it does still have Gerard Depardieu in it, so I thought, just like the foolish old woman in almost any story you can think of, "what harm can it do?"

When it ended I was so desperate to see it all get better that I immediately went on 'Teleport Films' and paid £2 to watch Manon des Sources. (As an aside, it still bothers me, which I can remember it did when it came out, that the 18-year-old Manon bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the little girl in the first film. What was that about??)

Okay, so the sweet, brave man Jean is still dead, so that's not better. Daniel Auteuil - I mean the halfwit Ugotin, one half of the duo who originally blocked up the well, which led to the death of Jean - becomes more and more pitiable through his insane love for Manon, even sewing one of her hair ribbons to his nipple (?!) (a brilliant stroke, however), and ends up as a tragic character. The last part of the film concerns his uncle Papet, or Cesar, as he becomes more and more pitiable. His tragedy is almost more real, as he was the brains behind the operation. Even Ugotin was innocent in his lack of understanding, and used by his wily uncle. Cesar's life has been arid and loveless because of what turns out - at the end - to have been a misunderstanding with the legendary village beauty Florette, who moved away and married while he was in the army. The misunderstanding involved a lost letter, and of course the letter was about a baby, and of course the baby turns out to be Jean de Florette. Cesar, in other words, has blocked the well and led to the death of, not only his son, but the son of the lost love of his life. He is, needless to say, a very tragic figure, and even becomes noble in his grief, which Manon never sees. He is all the more noble and magnificent because he is played by the magnificent Yves Montand (and no, the mere matter of Yves Montand being 66 is not enough to deter your correspondent from her admiration).

The upshot is that, good Lord! This one is just as bloody depressing as the first one. Twenty years on and you'd think I'd have bloody got the point, right. But no.

What do I have to do to make it better? Stay up till 2am watching Green Card? ("you vegetarian! You - you - cucumber!")

Argh.

* Naturally, he is twenty years younger here. But even then he was - well, however much older than me. Quite a bit. The Baroque devotion never wavered even in his most "magnificent" phase.