Back to Normandy.

"Determined to cast only locals in his adaptation of Michel Foucault's I, Pierre Rivière, director René Allio combed Normandy in 1975 for a youngster to convey the true confessions of Pierre, a peasant who killed his mother, brother, and sister 140 years earlier," writes Michelle Orange, reviewing Back to Normandy for the Voice. "Allio was taken with the idea of returning the local legend to its people, and filled his film with farmers and factory workers; 30 years later, director Nicolas Philibert returned to ask the participants just how that worked out for them."

"As he chats with the families whose lives were briefly touched by the arcane disruptions of moviemaking, his visit yields a palimpsest of observations on work, rationality and the ineluctable connections between history and modernity," writes Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times.

Updated.

"Back to Normandy has some illuminating moments amid the nostalgia, but the film doesn't have nearly as much insight to offer on class, gender, the shifting times, or 15-minute celebrity as Paul Almond's and Michael Apted's Up! series," writes Martin Tsai in the New York Sun. "Mr Philibert's new film isn't nearly as haunting as some of his previous efforts. But one thing is sure: He is a wonderfully humanist filmmaker."

"A recent subset of French docs has shown a fascination with returning," notes Melissa Anderson in Time Out New York, but "Philibert proves that not all directors should wade in the same river twice."

Earlier: Reviews from Cannes 07.

Update: "What is particularly fascinating is the way this series of reflections is filtered through Philibert's own focus," writes Cullen Gallagher at Not Coming to a Theater Near You, "which isn't so much the motivation of the original crime, the debate of Rivière's madness, or even really the production of Allio's film: Philibert, a humanist documentarian, is primarily interested in the actors themselves, and the chatty charm and small-town warmth they radiate.... Willing to indulge in the villagers' anecdotes and personal histories, Philibert captures a sense of small-town ephemera that is too often caricatured or exaggerated, and he does so with both sincerity and subtlety."

Posted by dwhudson at July 25, 2008 11:23 AM