Wild Flowers

Anyone who has spent Christmas in the company of an ageing relative, and by Boxing Day felt a strangling fit coming on, will be on familiar territory here, with an elderly woman (Nadeau), tight-lipped and fussy, coming to stay for a week in the country with her daughter and grandchildren. Perhaps at two hours-plus of fairly slow-moving action you feel the tedium of the old lady's visit almost as much as her daughter (Magny) - a potter trying to reject a stereotyped role of wife and mother - but the film also raises many interesting questions about the importance of families and the nature of relationships within them. Its main purpose, though, working through this clash between generations, is a plea for tolerance, most effectively expressed in the portions of the film which lapse into black-and-white to indicate what the characters really feel about each other.