A Sunday in the Country
Un dimanche à la campagne

The prolific French director Bertrand Tavernier (The Clockmaker, Coup de Torchon, Round Midnight) racked up a slew of accolades for this pastoral picture set in France before WWI. Based on Pierre Bost's 1945 novel Monsieur Ladmiral va bientôt mourir, the simple story centers on Monsieur Ladmiral, an elderly, unexceptional painter living alone in the country with his housekeeper Mercédès. Like every Sunday, he is visited by his son Gonzague, his son's wife, Marie-Thérèse, and their three children. On this particular Sunday, Monsieur Ladmiral's ebullient, liberated daughter Irene shows up and upsets the peaceful routine. The film looks like an impressionist painting come to life, but there's not much actual life on display here. Emotions are felt rather than expressed, leaving the narrator to occasionally explain what the people we're seeing on screen are feeling. For all its whistful qualities, this quiet stroll of a movie is too inconsequential to have garnered all the acclaim it got, including Best Director at Cannes and a wealth of nominations and awards from the major Film Critics Circles.