it's not often I am actually tingling when the credits roll, but this truly rocked my boat. A very subtle and loving, but never cringingly nostalgic story about simple life. And quite hilarious, like the scene where Julien is doing sums with his mom and the entire family has to jump in to help. ("that can't be right") very funny. I found I still wanted more: I wanted to know what happened to "monsieur" when he retired, I wanted to see how the boys fared in secondary school (probably getting a hard time)and I wanted to see all their houses and their families. I was sorry though about both the beginning and the end sequences. Unnecessarily cluttered. It should have ended on Lopez' face. Or perhaps on the tortoises, crawling across the floor yet again. Not this rather superfluous "pretty picture" of the village. And the beginning as well: the cows and the snow didn't seem to have a real purpose and it diminished the start of what was going to be a very good ride. But still: it was.
Review of To Be and to Have
