Jacquou le croquant (2007) - film review

In 1815, young Jacquou lives an idyllic peasant life with his parents in the Périgord region of France.  But one day, his childhood happiness is cruelly ended when his father is arrested, after a dispute with the arrogant Count de Nansac.  With both his parents dead, Jacquou is adopted by Bonal, a kind priest, under whose influence he grows into an assured, morally upright young man.   Now an adult, Jacquou has one desire.  To repay the Count de Nansac for the evil he once inflicted on his parents...

Laurent Boutonnat’s transition from director of lurid music videos to fully fledged feature filmmaker was never going to be easy and if his latest film is anything to go by he should probably stick with what he knows best.  Jacquou le croquant, an epic blockbuster adaptation of Eugène Le Roy’s late 19th Century novel, feels like a horrific accident in a kitsch factory, a seemingly interminably spectacle of cinematic clichés that, whilst spuriously alluring from a purely visual point of view and probably rollicking good entertainment for those of primary school age, is completely lacking in substance and narrative cohesion.  Sitting through two and half hours of this characterless, colour saturated, totally anaemic monstrosity will prove to be more of a challenge for the discerning cinemagoer than having to read every volume of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu in colloquial Serbo-Croat.  The sad thing is that Boutonnat’s cinematic style - which seems to be more about creating an immediate visual impact than saying anything remotely profound or emotionally involving - is becoming all too prevalent these days.  It’s a ghastly thought, but one day all films may be like this - soulless collisions of light and celluloid.

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