My Favorite Season

Amazon.com

A troubled family, living in genteel, suburban comfort in the south of France is jolted by the deteriorating health of their elderly grandmother and the reappearance of an absented sibling. Catherine Deneuve plays Emilie, a disillusioned parent and frustrated wife, who finds herself drawn away from her unimaginative husband toward her brother, a jealous and charismatic neurosurgeon. Structured like a novella with four chapters, Téchiné's film is riddled with long stretches of ponderous, often humorless, philosophical dialogue. Deneuve's Emilie remains inexpressive and remote; she occupies the moral center of the film, but her characterization isn't generous enough to grant us access to her motivations. Daniel Auteuil fares better as brother Antoine--his odd features and intelligent eyes communicate fathomless restlessness and longing. Spectacular, jaw-dropping footage of Southern France provides a gorgeous backdrop for many scenes, lending a depth and resonance that might otherwise be lacking. Bonus: Marcello Mastroianni's daughter Chiara portrays Emilie's daughter; she's a delight to watch and she acquits herself marvelously. --Miles Bethany

Customer Reviews:

Reality Bites.......2006-03-02

And so does this piece of pretentious trash! Half-hearted plodding thru a directionless plot by has-beens and wannabe's. The music (what music?) was just as mindless. This movie had so much unleased potential that it was almost torture to watch. I gave it one star for the nice scenery.

ZZZzzzzzzzz....................2005-07-05

I can't resist a movie with Catherine Deneuve - now I may be able to. A boring little tale of the spiraling sickness of an aged parent, unfeeling self-absorbed family, doomed, passionless marriage and a hint of incest. I gave it an extra star because, well it is Catherine after all. Rent it if you're desperate, but do not buy unless you're a masochist.

Scrupulous but unrewarding.......2004-03-22

"My son is a surgeon, my daughter a lawyer. I have children who achieved something. I took much care of them when they were young". (The mother, afer her children sent her off to a home for the aged).

"I saw to it that she has a tv-set in her room".(The daughter, trying to soothe her conscience).

Emilie (Catherine Deneuve) and her brother Antoine (Daniel Auteuil) have not seen each other in three years, but their mother's (Marthe Villalonga) stroke brings them together again. Emilie decides to assume her responsibility and lodge her mother at her house, a solution that makes no one happy. Emilie's marriage exists on paper only and she has difficulties in establishing personal contacts with her grown-up children. Her mother is not very sociable either, and feels like an alien element in her daughter's family. Christmas arrives and when Antoine's quarrel with Emilie's husband turns into a brawl Emilie decides to give up her marriage and her mother packs and moves in with her son. But their living together fails equally. She has the feeling the her son is angry with her: "Have I kept him from living? Little pleasures?". She decides to go home.

Summer arrives and the second stroke. The mother is outwardly composed when she takes place in the car that drives her to her new home. She is so resigned that she killed all her chicken before leaving her house for the last time. She shows no interest for the landscape or her children's incessant talking.

Antoine tries to convince his sister to go to live with him: "We have two brains from one womb" but she hesitates: "I'm afraid of you, Antoine!". The siblings buckle under the nervous strain while their mother is nearly frantic: Her physical condition is serious enough, but the company of senile and mentally disturbed patients finishes her off...

Ah! Why can't director Andre Techine be a little bit more like Claude Chabrol? Chabrol, in Techine's place would have built up an ominous atmosphere and let the audience suspect that something alarming and unspeakable is going on...But Techine has the bad habit of waving a bait (incest) in front of the audience and then leading them up the garden path. The film is well constructed (the four seasons) and the shots look like a perfect dream. The subject - two siblings don't know how to handle their mother and their own fear of old age - can't fail to touch and the performances of the elder generation are marvelous. Villalonga is resolute but ultimately embittered and her dogged attempts to retain her mental faculties are heartbreaking. Deneuve gives one of her greatest performances: warm and noble, trying to give proof of moral strength, outraged to be forced in the defensive and feel guilty about things she cannot change. Sometimes we catch Auteuil at an "arriere pensee" when he unmasks his feelings in his cryptic monologues. He becomes more and more erratic and suddenly he cracks up. But this is just one side of the film. The scenes with the younger generation seem not directed at all, as if the director told them: Folks, you're free. Do your own thing. The scene when Deneuve's son invites his girlfriend to strip in front of his sister (Deneuve's own daughter Chiara) is especially repellent, and Deneuve's "bed-scene" on a park-bench is sickening and unmotivated (The motive was of course to pep a static film up). MA SAISON PREFEREE is a very unrewarding film. High production values but big disappointment. I wish this film were trash, so that I can trample on it. Since it isn't I feel blackmailed...

Intelligent and Wonderfully Brillant Cinema.......2004-02-18

This review refers to the Fox Lorber DVD edition of "My Favorite Season"....

"My Favorite Season" is a wonderful piece of French filmmaking.The intelligent and subtle screenplay, the brillant cast, the beautiful setting of the French countryside,marvelous music, all under the expert direction of Andre Techine, had me hanging on every word,left me wanting more of this exquiste film, and thinking about it for quite some time afterwards.

Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil, work beautifully together as Emilie and Antoine, brother and sister trying to cope with a very dysfunctional family life, their own troubled relationship and the declining health of their aging mother.This is a family that tries very hard to just like one another, and with the passsing of each season,the changes in their lives run a gamut of emotions. Deneuve, Auteuil, and the rest of this outstanding cast will draw you in with their intuitive performances.It is a film that will involve you from the first frame to the last.

Fox Lorber has a knack for selecting and bringing to DVD some of the best international works out there. "My Favorite Season" is among the best of those. Overall, the DVD presents a nice clear picture in widescreen. The film is in French with subtitles in English. I did not see any way to delete the subtitles though. A trailer, and biographies are also included.

A wonderful emotional drama, and fine piece of filmmaking...enjoy...Laurie

Reality Never Tasted So Good.......2002-12-27

My Favorite Season is a film by Andre Techine. It depicts a dysfunctional French family as they come to grips with life in post-Vichy southern France. I'm kidding of course, the film has nothing to do with French Fascism, except in the sense that that period in history led up to the events depicted in the film, and if there had been no German occupation and Vichy government, this film would have been greatly different.

As to the film, it is lyrical and hypnotic. If this is what the French think of as dysfunction, then I am moving to France, because dysfunction never tasted so sweet. This is one of the greatest movies ever made, and here's why:

The performance of Catherine Deneuve. This was the first time I'd seen her in a movie, but I'd heard alot, well not alot, but some things about her, and, no actually I saw her in a stupid movie with John Malkovich, but in this movie I saw the raw hypnotic power of her stage presence. She doesn't have to do anything, and thank God, because the naturalness of her performance comes through. The thing that sets this movie apart is that it doesn't try to hard. This movie subtracted much of what goes into a modern American film, such as half-hearted attempts at plot, drama, action, good acting, etc... and created a story based on substance and momentum. The actors are effortless in their perfect portrayals of this so-called dysfunctional family. Que vive Le Maisson Preferee.

Average customer rating:

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