(film 120 minutes)
Manon des Sources (1986)
(film 113 minutes)
Directed by: Claude Berrie
Language: French
Rating: 7/10 | Yaser Tohidi
April 05, 2020
A drama is filmed in two parts. The story in the first part is developed around a water resource, a spring, and the relation of two neighbors together and in relation to that spring, one rich and experienced who wants the spring and its land even by committing crime and the other new and poor but full of ambition and theoretical knowledge who just want to have a good relation with his neighbor and nature around and a good life for his family. The new neighbor is Jean de Florette, a hunchback, and his wife and daughter. The old neighbor is Cesar Soubeyran and his nephew Ugolin. Cesar and Ugolin conceal the spring and hide its location from Florette family and this makes them suffer a lot to supply water to their land. Jean finally dies as a consequence of his efforts to find the spring and Soubeyran family buys their field and they immediately start to open the spring.
In the second part, the story is extended to the whole village. Manon, the daughter of the hunchback, realizes all the truth and more than that, she realizes that many in the village knew the existence of the spring but they also hide this fact because they didn’t want a hunchback, a bad fate, to be in their village. She accidentally finds the water source of the whole village. She cuts off the source. This is a disaster for the village. This makes the village agitated to find the reason and they find no shelter but in the church. Priest points to the existence of a criminal and Manon presents actually two criminals, Cesar and Ugolin. Ugolin commits a suicide as he finds out his love to Manon is one-sided and leaves his farm to Manon, the farm that they bought from her father Jean, the hunchback. Manon opens the water source. Meanwhile, Cesar realizes that Jean was his own son from his short but deep relation with Florette before he joins the French army in Africa. Also, Cesar leaves all of his property for Manon, his one and only granddaughter.
The Movie creates a drama spanning between generations connected by water and land. The love to land and family bring immoralities and crime. However, the justice will prevail even though after many years. The movie, from the beginning, creates characters of Soubeyran and Florette families and in the second part, extends to the whole village and villagers. This extension of the story makes the second part much more entertaining to watch. Thanks to the plans taken in the village and farm lands and nature around, and the story behind, the village becomes familiar to the viewers’ eyes and remains into memories. Several villagers becomes a character; the mayor, the farmer who wants his water for which he paid, the village’s spokesman, etc.
Despite the great pictures during the two episodes, the movie, however, suffers from poor mise en scène in some sequences for example the explosion and hunchback’s death due to that and Cesar’s death which are hard to believe. Just compare these two deaths with Ugolin’s which is perfectly convincing.
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