À la place du coeur (1998)

User Rating:

6.6/10   

Director:

Robert Guédiguian

Writers:

James Baldwin (novel)
Robert Guédiguian (writer)

Release Date:

9 December 1998 (France)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Romance

Plot:

Clementine, detta Clim, e Bébé, immigrato di colore adottato da una famiglia francese, sono cresciuti insieme...

Plot Keywords:

Sarajevo | Teenage Girl | Working Class | Teenage Pregnancy | Family Relationships

Awards:

3 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Ariane Ascaride	...	Marianne Patché
Christine Brücher	...	Francine Lopez
Jean-Pierre Darroussin	...	Joël Patché
Gérard Meylan	...	Franck Lopez
Alexandre Ogou	...	Francois 'Bebe' Lopez
Laure Raoust	...	Clémentine 'Clem' Patché
Véronique Balme	...	Sophie Patché
Pierre Banderet	...	Mr. d'Assas
Patrick Bonnel	...	Jaime
Djamal Bouanane	...	Khalil
Jacques Boudet	...	Monsieur Lévy
Guillaume Cantillon	...	Daniel Corti
Jean-Jérôme Esposito	...	Le Gringalet
Marius Grygielewicz	...	Piet Radic
Aurore Mensah	...	Blondine

Also Known As:

Where the Heart Is (International: English title)

Runtime:

113 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Chile:14 | France:U | Spain:13 | Sweden:7 | Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud) | UK:15

Filming Locations:

Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France

Company:

Agat Films & Cie

Movie Connections:

Follows Marius et Jeannette (1997)

Soundtrack:

Baby Let It Be

A fine piece of storytelling and emotional sculpturing

One of the most purely pleasing movies of the 1998 Toronto film festival - has the good heart of Marius and Jeanette without the excess idealism. Guediguian seems to have a truly benevolent view of people here, but it's clear-eyed; he doesn't beat the drum of social inequality but it's implicit in his choices - the one clear villain in this movie (with no redeeming counterargument) is the police chief who victimizes Baby. The movie moves easily between flashback and present day, unsentimental about the real but not blind love of the two; effectively portraying a wealth of secondary characters. When Ascaride takes off to Sarajevo to find the woman that accused Baby of rape, it's still as compelling, although almost like a fantasy breaking into the tight-knit primary world of the movie - one tends to read this sequence as something of an experiment lying aside Guediguian's central concerns. Having gone that far, one might (sentimentally) wish for a more well-rounded happy ending, but by then Guediguian's probably experimented as much as he'd want to - and that's fine; the calibration is fine as it stands. With countless affecting moments; this really is a fine piece of storytelling and emotional sculpturing.