Idiosyncratic French filmmaker, Robert Guediguian, returns to his beloved hometown of Marseilles, for the gritty and ultimately heart-wrenching, La Ville est Tranquille (The Town is Quiet). This neo-realist lament details the often intertwined lives of numerous, diverse characters living within Marseilles' sun bleached confines. Much like Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia and the films of Robert Altman (Nashville, The Player), La Ville est Tranquille is built upon disparate vignettes and characters that ultimately converge, or in some cases collide with often devastating results.
(Potential plot spoiler ahead)
At its core is the harrowing story of a working class mother Michele (Ariane Ascaride), and her heroin-addicted daughter, Fiona (Julie-Marie Parmentier). Played with an earthy dignity by Ascaride (wife of director Guediguian), Michele, labours throughout the night at a fish market to support her daughter and infant grandchild. When the addiction grows more severe, Michele turns to prostitution to procure the drugs needed to ease her daughter's agony.
This expression of love at its most extreme, brings Michele into contact with an old friend and lover from her youth, Gerard (Gerard Meylan), who now runs an always deserted bar that is a front for his dual careers as drug dealer and assassin. Soon, Michele's life is further complicated by a client Paul (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), a porn-addicted taxi driver who quickly falls for her. The relationships she shares with Paul and Gerard offer Michele the only degree of stability in her otherwise fractured existence
Other, intriguing stories intersect along the way before the films genuinely shocking denouement. Michele's ultimate solution to her predicament is in equal parts horrifying and heart-breaking.
Finally, amid this bleak landscape filled with shattered lives, Guediguian offers us the faintest glimmer of hope. The dreams of an incidental character, a young immigrant pianist, are fulfilled to the suitable accompaniment of Bach's 'Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring'.
Whilst La Ville est Tranquille is profoundly depressing, it does reward the viewer with a gripping exploration of the often heroic nature of love.
(Potential plot spoiler ahead)
At its core is the harrowing story of a working class mother Michele (Ariane Ascaride), and her heroin-addicted daughter, Fiona (Julie-Marie Parmentier). Played with an earthy dignity by Ascaride (wife of director Guediguian), Michele, labours throughout the night at a fish market to support her daughter and infant grandchild. When the addiction grows more severe, Michele turns to prostitution to procure the drugs needed to ease her daughter's agony.
This expression of love at its most extreme, brings Michele into contact with an old friend and lover from her youth, Gerard (Gerard Meylan), who now runs an always deserted bar that is a front for his dual careers as drug dealer and assassin. Soon, Michele's life is further complicated by a client Paul (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), a porn-addicted taxi driver who quickly falls for her. The relationships she shares with Paul and Gerard offer Michele the only degree of stability in her otherwise fractured existence
Other, intriguing stories intersect along the way before the films genuinely shocking denouement. Michele's ultimate solution to her predicament is in equal parts horrifying and heart-breaking.
Finally, amid this bleak landscape filled with shattered lives, Guediguian offers us the faintest glimmer of hope. The dreams of an incidental character, a young immigrant pianist, are fulfilled to the suitable accompaniment of Bach's 'Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring'.
Whilst La Ville est Tranquille is profoundly depressing, it does reward the viewer with a gripping exploration of the often heroic nature of love.