... would not exhaust the pleasures to be found in Tavernier's adaptation of the novel by Pierre Bost. Comparisons with Louis Malle's Milou en Mai are probably inevitable and when considered as a pair they remind us of the timelessness of French family life inasmuch as although sixty years divides the time-frames (Milou was set in 1968, this one around 1905) the country itself is eternal as are the people who inhabit it. True in Milou there is perhaps a more extended family and a sexual revolution has been and gone but essentially the two families are virtually interchangeable with their almost infinitesimal internecine rivalries, unspoken guilt feelings etc. The moment when free spirit Irene (Sabine Azema) asks her elderly father to dance with her is at once one of the most joyous and tenderest moments in film history and the ending with the ancient painter, alone for another week with his memories, replaces the canvas he is working on with a blank and sits contemplating it is masterful. One of Tavernier's best, which is saying something.
Review of A Sunday in the Country
