Dialogue avec mon jardinier (2007) - film review

After the break-up of his marriage, a fifty-something painter decides to swap his hectic life in Paris for the peace and quiet of the countryside.  But no sooner has he moved into the house in which he grew up than he realises that he cannot maintain the ample gardens by himself, so he puts out an ad and in no time has a prospective gardener.  The artist is pleasantly surprised when the job applicant turns out to be an old school friend, Léo.  The latter has recently given up his job as a railway worker and is happy to work for his friend as a gardener and odd-job man.  As the two middle-aged men renew their acquaintance their friendship grows and they become inseparable.  The artist, nicknamed Dupinceau by his friend, marvels at the beautiful simplicity of Léo’s life and finds that this inspires him in his work.  But just when Dupinceau feels he has finally found some calm in his life, disaster strikes...

Dialogue avec mon jardinier is the kind of quintessentially French film which intelligent non-French audiences adore - a quiet, reflective comedy-drama centred on the relationship that develops between two instantly likeable everyman characters.  It is certainly a film with considerable charm, its unhurried pace and pretty rural setting offering a very welcome respite from the stresses and strains of modern life - cinema at its most relaxing and therapeutic.  Charming as the film is, however, it is at times frustratingly simplistic in its exploration of human relationships, and this is particularly apparent in the secondary characters who are little more than thinly sketched stereotypes.  Fortunately this one failing is more than adequately compensated for by the immensely engaging contributions from the lead actors Daniel Auteuil and Jean-Pierre Darroussin, who complement one another so well and invest the film with so much charm that you cannot help falling in love with it, despite its obvious shortcomings.  

Dialogue avec mon jardinier was directed by Jean Becker, who is best known for his popular nostalgia piece Les Enfants du marais (1999), which this film has much in common with.  Becker, the son of the influential French filmmaker Jacques Becker, has had something of a chequered career.  After a lacklustre period as a film director in the 1960s, he made a high-profile comeback in the ’80s with the stylish erotic thriller L’Été meurtrier (1983).  However, his career only really took off with Les Enfants du marais and in recent years he appears to have found a new lease of life, loved and admired by audiences if not by the critics.  Dialogue avec mon jardinier exemplifies the kind of film that Becker makes best, a gentle rural fable that combines his love for the French countryside with his interest in friendships between seemingly ill-matched characters.

There is nothing particularly profound about this film.  It vaguely resembles one of Eric Rohmer’s sunnier offering but manifestly lacks the subtlety and depth that Rohmer so easily brought to his films.  It is a modest film that has no other ambition than to celebrate friendship, that cornerstone of human existence which cinema, and indeed society in general, tends to underrate (if not scorn) these days.   Auteuil and Darroussin are superb, as ever, and make a perfect contrast - the former’s pent-up anger and moody introspection effectively complementing the latter’s almost Buddhist-like calm.  There are no dramatic developments (apart from the one that comes right at the end), yet the film holds our attention all the way through, its interest value deriving entirely from the subtle interplay of the two main characters as they get to know one another and thereby find a greater sense of well-being.   Dialogue avec mon jardinier is not a deep or complex film, but it is a curiously life-affirming piece with a simple but cogent message - friendships are like plants: they require patient attention and nuturing if they are to blossom and bring forth fruit.  Romantic love may wither and die, but friendship, if carefully cultivated, will prove eternal.

© James Travers 2011

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