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Conversations with My Gardener (2008)

Director: Jean Becker

Time Out rating

Average user rating

2 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

This twee, Rohmer-lite French comedy about the brotherly rapport between a lofty but affable bourgeois painter (Daniel Auteuil) and a salt-of-the-earth gardener (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) is slight but very pleasant to sit through. Adapted from a memoir by artist Henri Cueco and directed with tasteful economy by Jean (son of Jacques) Becker, it’s a predictable tale where bonhomie develops into companionship and life lessons are duly passed across the social divide.

However, it does conform rigidly to preconceptions of the French middle-classes as intellectual, wine-swilling gadabouts whose anxieties about love and art amount to very little in comparison to the struggles of their cloth-capped, working-class brethren whose daily toil against repression and ailment will, if they’re lucky, result in some new tools or even a holiday to the seaside. As with all male-bonding films, there’s also a mild homoerotic subtext which may remind viewers of the romantic exchanges shared between Ted and Ralph from the ‘The Fast Show’.

Author: David Jenkins

Time Out London Issue 1996, Nov 20-26, 2008

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User reviews of this film

Jamie Higgins said...

Posted on Jun 16 2010 22:28 Time Out's review is utter nonsense - there's not a hint of homoerotic subtext. It's abundantly obvious that the Auteuil character likes much younger glam women, and the Darroussin character is happily and faithfully married.
About the only thing that does grate is the gardener's fatal illness at the end - it would have been far more of a high-wire act to close the film on something ordinary happening. That said, I found it a splendid way to end the season at my local film soc.

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JoanieW said...

Posted on Jan 01 2010 17:34 Totally superb film, can't recommend highly enough. Acting wonderful - utterly believable relationship between two old friends, understated so that the viewer makes the links. Feel for the two men throughout as their relationship reestablishes itself and cried at the end both times. Superb filming and can't wait to watch other films which feature these two actors.

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