The Thorn in the Heart

In films like ‘Dave Chappelle’s Block Party’ (2005) and ‘Be Kind, Rewind’(2007), rogue French talent Michel Gondry developed an interest in examining how the actions of exceptional individuals can affect an entire community. ‘The Thorn in the Heart’ extends this interest, in that it’s an intimate documentary which offers an endearingly wonky portrait of his beloved aunt Suzette, supply teacher extraordinaire in the rural schools of the Cévennes region. The film comes into its own when Gondry begins to see that beneath the kind-hearted façade of this charismatic, confident woman lie deep regrets about her private life, notably her relationship with her late husband and how she dealt with her son’s latent homosexuality. Its rambling structure, peppered with lyrical, magical-realist asides, may not be to all tastes, but there’s a sense that Gondry wants this to be more than an eccentric personal portrait: he’s less concerned with getting to the punchline than with observing how the joke is told.