Les Petits ruisseaux (2010) - film review

Emile, a seventy-year-old widower, enjoys a peaceful retirement without a care in the world.  He spends his days fishing on the banks of the River Loire with Edmond, another retired man.  One day, Edmond dies suddenly, having told his friend that he has been leading a secret and very active love life.  Realising that it will not be long before he joins Edmond, Emile acquires a sudden taste for desires that he has not experienced for years.  He is about to embark on his second adolescence...

You’re never too old to have a good time - that’s the moral of this diverting little comedy which first-time director Pascal Rabaté adapted from his popular comic book.  At a time when cinema has never been so youth-orientated and when everyone seems to be obsessed with looking young, Les Petits ruisseaux feels like a breath of fresh air, reassuring us that being old and having fun are not mutually exclusive.

Much of the film’s charm lies in the way it downplays its somewhat subversive concept (namely that an a septuagenarian can enjoy a healthy love life) by adopting a style that is more in keeping with the conventional view of old age (i.e. such as we would find in a typical Jean Becker film).  You can easily imagine a version of this film which had a much more punchy presentation, in which the principal characters behaved like drug-crazed geriatric teddy boys.  Wisely, Rabaté did not go down this more truculent path and instead delivers a gentler film in which the characters are not ridiculous caricatures but recognisable senior inhabitants of our own world, albeit ones who prefer a night of passion to one that revolves around a mug of Horlicks and a Jilly Cooper novel.

Daniel Prévost is superb as the main protagonist, the solitary old widower who rejuvenates before our eyes as he rediscovers his taste for life and his love for the pleasures of the flesh.   It is a wonderfully humane and nuanced performance which takes what appears, on the face of it, to be an outré premise and makes it real and rather endearing.  Just why shouldn’t a 70-year-old live like a reckless adolescent?  Just why shouldn’t he extract as much happiness from his last few precious drops of life?  What are we here for if not to enjoy ourselves?  

Les Petits ruisseaux is likely to be controversial, since it boldly challenges us to confront our prejudices about old age and accept that the young do not own the exclusive rights to hedonism.  Yet its characters are portrayed so sympathetically that anyone who watches it cannot fail to be bowled over by its charm and humanity.  After all, life doesn’t end when you stop working.  Au contraire...

© James Travers 2010

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