My Mother's Castle

A French film set in Provence. Marcel is a child. He goes with his family to a house in the hills for the holidays. The father is a teacher. Republican, bound to rules, and unwilling to be in anyone's debt. The mother, Augustine, is frail. Walking is hard for her and the road is long. The road is the real matter. Getting to the house means going round the hills, and that takes hours. There is a shortcut. The path along the canal runs through the gardens of four large estates and it is forbidden. The canal keeper turns out to be an acquaintance. He gives the family a key. From there the film consists of those journeys. Each time there are walls, gates, dogs and the fear of being caught. The father is ashamed at every crossing. He is a schoolmaster and he is trespassing; the narrative makes that felt again and again. The mother is frightened. The keeper and his dog met at one gate is the film's most tense scene and she breaks down there. Marcel has a friend as well. Lili knows the hills and teaches him everything. Isabelle is a separate line. A girl, a garden, a first infatuation and a humiliation. What the narrative is interested in is not a holiday but class: all its tension comes from a teacher's family having to cross other people's land and feeling small at every crossing. The last section jumps forward in time. The narrator is grown and passes the same walls; the film's title finds its meaning there. The source is Marcel Pagnol's childhood memoirs, and this is the second film paired with My Father's Glory; the two were shot back to back with the same crew. It was filmed in the real hills of Provence. Philippe Caubère, Nathalie Roussel, Didier Pain, Julien Ciamaca and Thérèse Liotard are in the cast. Yves Robert directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes French provincial storytelling and quiet films about childhood. Who it is not for: anyone expecting incident; the narrative is almost entirely walking, talk and landscape, and nothing happens until the last ten minutes.