You Will Be My Son

I saw this film when it came out in theaters and the plot still resonates to the point that this morning, 12 years later, I had to look up the reviews. I think you need to be of a certain age to understand the varied relationships between fathers and sons and fully appreciate this film. This is not about who is most knowledgeable and is deserving of largesse on that basis alone. Nor is it about pitying one who is bullied by a thoughtless and egotistical father. Some readers - those of the "me generation" I would guess - see this solely as an unexpected chance to gain valuable property, and why not?!! This is about justice and the thwarting of someone who thinks he can always get his way. Intriguing twist at the end. Beautifully shot.

Suppose you got a cancer at the later stage, your boss liked your son, because his own son was no good at all to take over the vineyard and wine business. Your boss would let your son to take over the business, so your wife would be also taken care of. You should be very happy that your family would be safe and sound after your death. Could it be possible that just because your boss treated your son like his own and would entrust him to take over the vienyard and wine business, then you felf jealous? No, absolutely not. You'd be very happy about such outcome. That's human nature. Yet this guy who got the terminal cancer simply couldn't accept such good luck for his som and his wife, instead of being very grateful to his boss, he committed some very illogic crime.

The whole movie was 99.9% fine until the unnatural, illogical even ridiculous twist that ruined the whole movie. It's a very stupid twist and completely ruined it.

The film is a well-crafted study of two fathers and two sons. One father owns a prestigious French vineyard but cannot accept or encourage his own son, whom he actually despises, despite the young man's constant attempts to please his father. The other father, terminally ill with cancer, had been estate manager of the vineyard. When his son, who had emigrated and worked for a California winery, returns to visit his dying father, the vineyard owner is so impressed that he attempts to lure the visitor back to France with an impressive job package... including an offer to legally adopt him so that he would share in the inheritance of the vineyard. So now the lines of conflict are neatly in place. One son versus the other. The dying father versus the vineyard owner whom he believes is trying to "steal" away his son... added to the basic conflict between a demanding father and his thankless son. The characters are skillfully drawn and flawlessly acted by a marvelous cast of French players. I thought the direction and photography were superb; you will also learn a lot about the art of growing grapes and producing fine French wines.

This movie is inept, not because of its acting, which is not top notch but because of the script: characters are unidimensional and we never know whose story it is.... The women characters, though hardly visible, at least have a like ability that the men characters lack Besides the lack of interesting characters, the story isn't interesting. It is highly predictable (no, I'm not going to tell you how it ends, but you can figure it in the first ten minutes of the film, if you are not yet discouraged. The only redeeming scenes (and probably those who explains the high grades given by reviewers and more sadly by the metascore critics) are those showing the fabrication of wine. Probably those who enjoyed the movie enjoyed wine, and that is a good excuse. To summarize, there are many better ways of spending 90 minutes of your time, one of which is to open a bottle of wine.

Gilles Legrand delivers with Tu Seras Mon Fils a poignant drama carried an excellent duo of actors whose performances are oozing accuracy, the always masterful Niels Arestrup, frightening as an authoritarian and despising patriarch, and Lorànt Deutsch, touching as a constantly demeaned son.

The viewer ends up completely carried away by this polished familial tragedy where the implacable unfolding of the plot and the striking dialogues totally captivate from end to end. However, certain motivations are a bit hard to assimilate and the purpose of the opening scene is questionable because it incomprehensibly reveals the twist of the movie, which by the way could be regarded as a bit sloppy.

All in all, Tu Seras Mon Fils overall is solid and deserves more consideration than the press critics tried to convince us.