Film Review
Fifty years on from its first airing in France, the classic children's
television series
Belle et
Sébastien (created by the actress turned writer
Cécile Aubry) gets a big budget reboot in this lavish period
drama - a nostalgia trip for fans of the original series but a tad
schmaltzy for your average mainstream cinema audience. As
Christophe Barratier had previously done with his 'modern' reworking of
Yves Robert's
La Guerre des boutons,
the original concept is shifted back from 1960s France to the Second
World War, at the time of the Nazi Occupation, and so we get another
overly generous dose of worn-to-death clichés doused in a thick
treacle of kitsch sentimentality. With its incredible plot and
barely credible performances,
Belle
et Sébastien would be an easy film to boycott were it not
for the sheer artistry with which its is crafted - its location
photography is simply stunning.
The film's director, Nicolas Vanier, earned his reputation as a
wildlife documentary filmmaker. In his first features -
Au nord de l'hiver (1993),
L'Enfant des neiges (1995) and
Le Dernier trappeur (2004) - Vanier
showed a genius for capturing the raw beauty of the natural world,
often in the most inhospitable of settings (the snowy wastelands of
Siberia and North America). This talent of his brought a powerful
sense of drama to his first fictional film,
Loup
(2009), and just about redeems his latest cinematic offering, although
this time his visual symphony is almost drowned out by surfeit of
careless sentiment milking. It's an awkward feast that Vanier
serves up for us - breathtaking vistas in one of the most stunning
areas of France (the Haute Maurienne-Vanoise valley in the
Rhône-Alpes) and a plot that looks like it may have been lifted
from the tackiest low budget television drama ever made, with dialogue
to match. One indulgence we can forgive Vanier is the casting of
Mehdi El Glaoui in a supporting role - he played Sébastien in
the original series.
As in Barratier's film, the WWII trappings prove to a totally
unnecessary embellishment which only distract us from what is at the
heart of the film, a heartwarming tale of one boy and his dog.
Had Vanier dispensed with all the recycled 'evil Nazi v. heroic
Resistance' nonsense and focussed on the central relationship between
the little boy (charmingly played by first-time actor Félix
Bossuet) and his screen-hogging hound his film would have had much
greater impact. In his enchanting
Le Renard et l'enfant (2007),
Luc Jacquet showed how beguiling a simple story about a child falling
in love with a wild animal can be and it is strange that Vanier should
have felt the need to open up the narrative to include a hackneyed WWII
plot that doesn't convince anyone. The blistering naivety of its
storyline and characterisation, to say nothing of its outbursts of tacky
sentimentality, makes
Belle et
Sébastien an ordeal that most adults will find hard to
stomach, although (like the series on which it is based) it will
doubtless have an immense appeal to children.
© James Travers 2014
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
High up in the French Alps during the Second World War, the idyllic tranquillity of a
small village is about to broken by the sudden arrival of a platoon of German
soldiers. Here, in this Alpine haven, a six-year-old boy named
Sébastien meets and befriends a stray dog, whom he christens
Belle. As Nazis begin persecuting the local population to weed
out members of a resistance group, Sébastien and Belle lend
their support to thwart a common enemy...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.