A Sunday in the Country (Un dimanche à la campagne)

Directed by Bertrand Tavernier
France 1984
90 minutes

Our notes

In a country house near Paris, toward autumn of 1912, an old man sings to himself as he prepares for the day. He brushes his teeth, shines his shoes, seems happy. Downstairs, his housekeeper sings a song of her own in the kitchen. When the old man comes downstairs, the two songs meet, in a harmony not of melody but of mood...

So begins "A Sunday in the Country", Bertrand Tavernier's graceful and delicate story about the hidden currents in a family. The old man is Monsieur Ladmiral, played by Louis Ducreux with buried depths of disappointment with his life. He is a painter; his studio is in the garden of his house. His son is Gonzague, his daughter-in-law Marie-Therese and there are three grandchildren. Ladmiral also has a daughter, Irene. Gonzague's family visits almost every Sunday; Irene, who is single, rarely comes at all. It is clear that the son has been a disappointment to his father, and that the son accepts this because he loves the old man. There is some talk about how the grandsons are doing in school, and the son remembers that he worked hard at school. "Sure you did," says Ladmiral, "but it didn't help." The family communicates with the shorthand of barely visible signs; when Marie-Therese skips away to catch the end of the mass, the old man asks, "Still devout?" and the son agrees, and an instant's look passes between them that suggests a long history, maybe unspoken, of their consideration of this woman.

Tavernier never forces his story upon us and has no great plot to unwind. He simply wants to observe his characters during the course of a long day during which we find that none of them are very happy with their lives. The son cannot please the father, hard as he tries, and the daughter cannot disappoint him, hard as she tries. The surface of the movie is drowsy and pastel. It seems to yearn toward Impressionism. "A Sunday in the Country" lulls us with the summery quiet of the day. There is lunch, a nap, tea, a walk, a visit to a bistro, dinner. We gather that the old man has had success as a painter, made money and been honoured (the rosette on his lapel indicates he is a chevalier of the Legion of Honour). But he missed the boat of Impressionism. Now, in his 70s, it seems clear to him that he directed his career down the wrong road. "I did what my teachers told me to do," he admits.

The day unfolds slowly until Irene arrives like a whirlwind, driving her own automobile. She sweeps up children in her arms, hurries through the house, is filled with energy. Together they all go to a nearby bistro. In public she is extroverted and almost too cheerful. In private we see her looking sadly at nothing. "Look at your sister," Ladmiral tells his son. "She forged ahead. You didn't." Looking at her car, the son says, "I had children, not a car."

At the end of the day, it is all there to be seen: Ladmiral's feeling that he took the wrong path in his painting, his son's feeling that he can never please the father whom he loves, his wife's silent bourgeois complacency, and the sister's secret unhappy urgency, with sudden telephone calls that send her away as quickly as she came. "A Sunday in the Country" has a haunting, sweet, sad quality. It is about this family and many families. It is told by Tavernier with great attention to detail and the details add up to the way life is. There are three startling moments when reality is broken, though these scenes are not so much supernatural as realizations of the kinds of thoughts, memories and fears we all have when we are around our families.

Tavernier, born in 1941, is one of the most gifted and skilled of French directors, the leader of the generation after the New Wave. He worked as a critic and a publicist (for Godard and Chabrol) before making his first film, "The Clockmaker," in 1974. He does not have a signature subject or style but ranges widely; his work includes "Coup de Torchon" (1981), which improbably transplants a Jim Thompson novel to French Africa; "Round Midnight" (1986), the story of the tenor sax player Dexter Gordon; "A Week's Vacation" (1980), with its great performance by Nathalie Baye as a schoolteacher who in a week away from work profoundly rediscovers her life; "Daddy Nostalgie" (1990), Dirk Bogarde's last performance, as a dying man reconciling with his daughter; and "L.627" (1992), which records the routines and futility of Parisian narcotics cops. And there are many more. His work has an abundance of invention and generosity. If there is a common element in his oeuvre, it is his constant sympathy for his fellow humans, his enthusiasm for their triumphs, his sharing of their disappointments. To see the work of some directors is to feel closer to them. To see Tavernier's work is to feel closer to life.

Monsieur Ladmiral - Louis Ducreux
Gonzague - Michel Aumont
Irène - Sabine Azéma
Marie-Thérèse - Geneviève Mnich
Mercédès - Monique Chaumette
Emile - Thomas Duval
Lucien - Quentin Ogier
Mireille - Katia Wostrikoff
Madame Ladmiral - Claude Winter

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