A Year in Provence

I have this on VHS, and I enjoyed it enormously. Every single scene had something to smile about, whether it was Peter Mayle struggling with french, or Challemagne the rooster. I have one question, Why did so many people ignore this series at the time? Of course, it fell victim to the Darling Buds of May, which is also wonderful, but this is so relaxing to watch.

Provence has never looked so beautiful, some of the landscapes were absolutely gorgeous. John Thaw gives a rock-solid performance, that is always overlooked. When I mention this series to anyone, they are either blank-eyed, or go on criticising the books. Lindsay Duncan is also wonderful as Annie, although I read somewhere, that Thaw's wife Shiela Hancock was originally asked to do the role before the producers decided she was too old.

Watch this series, you'll really like it. I am just angry, that this wonderful programme was ignored. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Peter Mayle's book is the type-specimen of the expat setting up in a (slightly) foreign land, and a wry set of vignettes of the learning experience. The film (or more properly telemovie) is an absurd - even offensive - exercise in stereotyping which panders to holiday nostalgia and the idea that France is stuck in a primitive past of 'characters' such as those we find in Marcel Pagnol's books/films and their later adaptations. That was 100 years ago! Even then they were 'characters' picked out for their end-of-bell-curve status.

Some reviewers mention with fondness the appalling house guest and the ridiculous Parisienne, both over-the-top embellishments, if not complete inventions. They are simply not believable, ridiculous cardboard cutouts, highly annoying and a complete detractor from the story. I wonder what Peter Mayle himself thinks of the 'extrapolation' of his book.

I will admit to having only watched the first 90 minute episode, but assume the rest is similar. Apart from a bit of personal nostalgia - I love Provence, the old villages and the countryside, and have been through some of the same experiences restoring a house in France (although the day-to-day reality is much more mundane and there are an awful lot of 'normal' people in France who would never make it into this movie) - I found this pastiche of 'characters', Pagnol, scenery and expatriate self indulgence, one of my least satisfying movie experiences for a long time. It's a movie I might well walk out of at the cinema.

I can get the scenery from the Tour de France coverage, the characters in all their richness from Pagnol, and the expat experience from (not always comfortable) reality. Better to watch a travel documentary - skewed of course, but at least some attempt at representing reality in an interesting way.

I don't believe that the smaller vignettes of the book could not have been turned into a movie. Obviously it would require a good storyline into which to weave them, but pickign a few and makign them 'episodes' was an easy way out.

The use of enough English mixed into the conversations as a mechanism to avoid subtitling is quite a good idea, but could have been done much better eg. the characters could have attempted some believable, halting/incorrect version in French and then quickly repeated in English as a sort of verbal subtitle, instead of speaking English at a Frenchman who ostensibly doesn't understand it and then in other places saying something quite fluently in French with an English word thrown in for some common word that they would clearly know (that would work if they were searching for a technical term). The French characters using occasional English words is quite believable. OK, this is a bit picky and might not jar so much on someone who only understands the English, but it could have been one of the saving graces of this film if done better.

The amount of French language is enormous for an English language production, and that makes it fun to listen and try to understand, because much of the French in conversation is not translated fully. The things that one expects from Provence are all there, and when the expected ending of a story plot does not come and the twist is even more inventive than the simple negation of a stereotype, the narrative really shines. Peter runs the plumber out and you would think that this is the beginning of a rancorous feud, but it's not. Winning at bowling turns out not to be winning after all. The production does its best to include some of the most pointed vignettes of the book. It manages to capture the flavor very well overall. For the strongest sense of the continuity, I recommend that you read the book first; then, when you watch this on VHS/DVD, you can bask in the extra time and story added here to add depth to this stranger and his wife in a foreign land desperately trying to become local and belong.

Peter Mayle's "A Year In Provence" was an unexpected success as a book in 1989, and the BBC filmed a version of it for the 1993 mini-series, which I never saw. But now it is also available as a two-disk DVD set, billed as an "A&E" network movie. This review is of that DVD set. I use the term "a version" of the book, because the two are quite different. An anal-retentive person who expects a film like this to be very similar to the book will have much difficulty watching it. However, for most of us who can enjoy a film on its own merits, without comparing it to the book too closely, it is a marvelous film, now one of my favorites.

The entire "film", to use that term rather loosely, consists of four consecutive 90-minute films, two on each DVD, and best watched over 4 consecutive evenings. While the book is organized by months, the film is broken into the four seasons, Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Where the book begins with their new year in Provence, the film begins with Peter's and Annie's final days at work, and old friends wishing them well in their new careers right before they actually move to France.

However the biggest departures are in style and in the characters. The book, written from a diary that Peter kept, is more like a survey of interesting places, characters, events, and customs. It rarely goes into much depth, instead covers his and Annie's experiences very broadly. In contrast, the film treats fewer subjects but explores most of them in more depth. Where the book only mentions the Parisian French, in the film we meet "Evelyn", the frantic woman who speaks an almost unintelligible form of English, who has an eye for Peter, and who almost goes mad trying to shut up the neighbor's cock that crows so loudly in the morning, waking her and her house guests.

In the book, the grape harvest and tour of the community winery is mentioned almost in passing. In the film, a funny story portrays how Peter thought his wine was really wine made from "his" grapes and, only after a multi-stop search finds out that it is simply his share of ordinary wine from the wine co-op. In the book Uncle Edward eagerly takes Peter into his wine cave, gives him an exhaustive tasting, sells him much more wine than he set out to buy. In the film, Uncle Edward "has no wine to sell" and simply dismisses Peter, but this is done as part of a larger episode.

There are numerous other such departures, and not much is available about the making of this film, so I have no idea whether the book or the film is more accurate, where there are different versions of the same story. While that may bother some, it doesn't bother me at all. Both versions are thoroughly entertaining.

Most noticeable are that virtually all characters in the film have names different from those in the book. The plumber Menucucci from the book becomes Colombani in the film. The strange neighbor Massott who kills foxes becomes Riviere. And in a similar manner other key characters are given different names. Perhaps this was done for legal reasons, where a diary, even when published, may contain real names, but a film like this may be considered a work of fiction and real names cannot be used. But that is just speculation on my part.

There are three main reasons I like this film so much. First, I am from the French-speaking part of Louisiana and can easily see in the various characters people I grew up around. Second, I spent two weeks in Provence during September 1998, with friends in a 200-year-old house not too different from the one the Mayles lived in. The roads, the people, towns like Ile-Sur-La-Sorgue, the aquaduct near Fontaine de Vaucluse, all included in this film and more brings back fond memories. And third, I really like films based on real events. I found that knowing at least rudimentary French helps greatly, even a viewer knowing no French can enjoy it, because key points in dialog are always repeated in English by a character.

John Thaw plays Peter Mayle and is very believable, although I don't believe Peter in real life is quite as frumpy as Thaw was here. Of note, John Thaw died earlier this year, 2002. But most remarkable are the total cast and what a great job they do playing the various French characters, and the various English visitors. Who could forget Alfred Molina's "Tony", the uninvited guest from hell, another portrayal different from the book?

The DVD picture and sound are not great, by today's standards, but they are still clearly better than a VHS tape. Anyone who has a fondness for, or just a curiosity about, life in Southern France should enjoy this film, "A Year In Provence." A wonderful, wonderful film.

I was worried that this A&E production would lack the charm of the book. As it turned out, the aesthetics of this film were spot on, even if the French humor was not as well adapted for the screen compared to all those wonderful passages that were peppered throughout the book.

I read the book many years before seeing the film, but remarkable, the details were still fresh in my mind, thanks to Mayle's gift of description.

I still gave this 4 stars because they did a great job of presenting Provence exactly the way it is and the way one pictures it while reading the book.

But it's the book that will always have a special place in my heart.

~NN