If Claude Sautet is most known for his films about middle class, he signs there an excellent movie about the father-son relationship, both belonging to the working class.
Patrick Dewaere is the "bad" son, returning home from the US and prison, with a drug addict and trafficker past. He's great, just right the whole movie. As always, I'm tempted to say.
Yves Robert, the father, is a discovery for me as an actor and a good surprise. I knew him merely as director - he directed a handful of popular success. His play was at Dewaere's height and scenes with both of us together a real delight.
The supporting roles, with Brigitte Fossey and Jacques Durilho, are also very good and give us some of the nicest scenes (the opera!).
The movie in itself stays a classic Sautet if I can say, even in this different settings, letting place to the characters, time to take its course. Showing the simple things of life. Kindliness for his characters. Caring for the little details. I don't know if this is because he is focused on this relationship and not on the description of a certain world, or if this is because he films a social background he knows less and with a generation that is not his, but it works really well, better than most of his middle-class movies.
If the misunderstanding between father and son is the motor of the movie, everyone knowing them, including the spectator, can only witness how similar they are but never at the same wavelength. Sautet adds nice secondary plots and manages a beautiful movie until a wonderful ending.
The movie in itself stays a classic Sautet if I can say, even in this different settings, letting place to the characters, time to take its course. Showing the simple things of life. Kindliness for his characters. Caring for the little details. I don't know if this is because he is focused on this relationship and not on the description of a certain world, or if this is because he films a social background he knows less and with a generation that is not his, but it works really well, better than most of his middle-class movies.
If the misunderstanding between father and son is the motor of the movie, everyone knowing them, including the spectator, can only witness how similar they are but never at the same wavelength. Sautet adds nice secondary plots and manages a beautiful movie until a wonderful ending.