When I saw the title ,I thought it was a remake of the 1949 excellent eponymous movie by Jean -Paul Le Chanois ,but it is not so .
But ,like it, it's also what the highbrows from the chic TV magazines call "old obsolete cinema"; this kind of cinema ,at a time when French comedies succumb to coarseness or feel good atmosphere and when the dramas want to be meaningful ,deep ,with complicated story-telling ,it is the kind of movie we are in need of .Desperately .....
From Maurice Genevoix's "Raboliot" .......
Paul ,an orphan, is taken in by Celestine and her husband , a game keeper who is hard on the poachers in the count's forests ;unlike that of Genevoix ,the count is a generous human man.But it's with poacher Totoche (François Cluzet,who recalls Michel Simon ) that Paul makes friends ;this grumpy man knows everything in the secret life of the forest and he has a lot of things to teach his young protégé ;hence the title ;all the scenes between them are excellent ,enhanced by a splendid cinematography ;it would have been interested to draw a parallel with the things Paul learns at school but the scenes with the teacher are few and far between: the swallows ,flying away to Africa ,is perhaps the only moment when the two worlds meet (with Du Bellay 's poem "Heureux Qui Comme Ulysse " as an adequate soundtrack);magic is everywhere in this hymn to nature .There' s even an ecological concern when the count's hateful heir wants to wall "his" property in.
....to Frances Hogdson Burnett's "little lord Fauntleroy"
Unfortunately , the last third ,in which Cluzet is almost absent , sinks into old hat melodrama;as soon as the count's evil son appears, all becomes so predictable that the movie becomes downright ridiculous .This umpteenth "from rags to riches "story,one has seen it so many times that one can wonder why the screenwriters should use so hackneyed tricks !Cardboard "uncle" Bertrand is so mean compared to the count's noble attitude ;it's a spate of finer feelings; the scene with the notary takes the biscuit !
In a nutshell ,all that concerns Paul and Totoche (a true cordon bleu at that!) rings true and is endearing;all that concerns the count,the (genuine?) gypsies and the prodigal son is rubbish.
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