Le Grand Chemin

Hubert's story of a nine-year-old Parisian boy's billeting in a Breton village has the universal appeal of a beloved genre. Birth, death, sex, kids' games, and adult secrets are seen through the eyes of sensitive little Louis (Antoine Hubert). Dumped on Marcelle (Anemone) and Pelo (Bohringer) while his mother goes into hospital to have a baby, Louis finds himself in a desperately troubled and sometimes violent household. Pelo boozes, and has to be brought home in a wheelbarrow, because Marcelle has become unresponsive after the death of their child. Both clutch for the boy's love, and bicker over him. A little village tomboy (Guedj) teases and instructs him in the ways of grown-ups, but Louis has to go through his familial insecurity on his own. The squabbling couple won French Oscars and richly deserve them - Anemone for her sassy walk and prissy ways, Bohringer for his rough, bawdy tenderness. The sense of a childhood summer remembered is sensitively conveyed, the barleysugar sweetness of days in the trees, the nocturnal alarms with the pillow over the ears.