Class,
social convention, and World War I are powerful forces aligned against a young
woman’s happiness. Yet, she may eventually
find her place in a world changing faster than she realizes in lead actor-director-screen
adaptor Daniel Auteuil’s respectful remake of Marcel Pagnol’s The Well-Digger’s Daughter (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
Pascal
Amoretti digs and repairs wells. It is
hard but honest work, still quite necessary in the early Twentieth Century southern
French provinces. The widower was
blessed and cursed with a brood of six girls.
Old Amoretti has come to rely on the eldest, Patricia, to manage his household,
but she has reached marriageable age. A
match with his smitten older employee Felipe Rambert would suit the working
class patriarch nicely, but Patricia’s has eyes only for Jacques Mazel, the dashing
young officer son of the town’s well-to-do hardware merchant.
Despite
knowing the impossibility of their affair, the young woman loses her head with
the military aviator the night before he ships out to the front. When Mazel is reported missing-in-action not
long after, the pregnant Amoretti must face her shame alone. Mazel’s parents certainly are not interested
in acknowledging the girl and her traditional father is at loss, unable to see around
society’s constraints.
The
thing about Digger though is that the
fallen Amoretti’s fortunes are not set in stone. People will rise to the occasion and redeem
themselves. Though the village gossips
would hardly put it in such terms, hers really is a story of virtue
rewarded. How she gets there will be
quite the trick. Chocked full of tearful
confrontations and convenient revelations, Digger
could have easily descended into sentimental treacle, but first-time helmer
Auteuil keeps it all concretely grounded in the characters’ natural and social
environments.
Already
a favorite of the Pagnol estate after his career-making performances in Claude
Berri’s Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, Auteuil is
reportedly already developing more Pagnol projects. As the painfully dignified and conflicted
father, he sets the tone for the deeply empathetic Digger. Likewise, Kad Merad’s
Rambert is more than just a likable lug, but a profoundly understanding old soul. Astrid Berges-Frisbey is genuinely moving in
her scenes with Auteuil, while also developing convincing chemistry with
Nicolas Devauchelle’s not as caddish as he sounds Mazel. An unusually forgiving film, it pardons the
transgressions of everyone, even the severe Mme. Mazel.
