You may be asking yourself, and not because you're insensitive but just because it strikes you, 'why is Michel Gondry, director of some of the most visually dazzling and original films of the last decade making some personal documentary about his Aunt and cousin and her time as a schoolteacher and so on?' I suppose, for one, since he damn well feels like it and has a strong bond (or just a strong interest) in his Aunt Suzette and learning more about her and showing her history to us. Whether the film is a home movie should be irrelevant, albeit Gondry makes his movie The Thorn in the Heart as some kind of weird statement on home movies (see how he leaves in the sound the camera makes when he shoots on 16mm) and their organic quality. What matters, ultimately, is if the people are interesting, and if the stories they tell gain our attention, and maybe if we know them a little more at the end or, at best, we want to spend some more time with them.
Without going as far to say Gondry made a great personal documentary, he did succeed on those terms I just mentioned. After a short time (and not including a kind of in-jokey opening story at the dinner table with Suzette laughing every other minute), we get into the story of this woman, Michel's Aunt, who lives in a rural village in France, and taught as a schoolteacher, raising her two children (her son, Jean-Yves, gets more time than the daughter, though she is mentioned and perhaps is on screen from time to time), and just living in a town like she did and the places she taught at. Gondry takes his small film crew to film some of these places, now mostly demolished or turned into homes, and he even goes to a rather touching extent of making up a projection room and screens a film (as used to be the place at the old school).
Sometimes these stories Suzette, now old and almost if not completely blind, are really amusing and just completely down to earth. We also hear about those she took care of, like Jean-Yves, and about his coming out of the closet (this is talked about in such a matter of fact, or just uncomplicated, way that it's sobering and heartfelt), and about when she took care of her grandkids (or maybe it was another third-generation 12 year old kid) in New York City for a year in 2005 or 2006. Some of these details could be made clearer, but it's hard to look at that as a big bad against the movie when Gondry takes such care in giving her time to speak, clearly, and go through the pages and other things in memory. Indeed the film reminded me of that wonderful film of his, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as a person looks through the myriad of memories, good and bad, and a train set (one of which that Jean-Yves might have made in his day as a hobby) is used as a transition device from year to year from the 1950s to the 1980's.
One of the bad memories that comes to light is the circumstances surrounding the death of Suzette's husband very suddenly in the 70's. She found out on a Monday and didn't tell her kids until two days later (she gives a reason as one of them had very important exams and would be completely devastated - the other one, Jean-Yves, was devastated, and it led to his nervous breakdown some time later). She tells this with great sorrow but as a fact of what happened; Suzette misses her husband, but at the same time is philosophical about death. "I only think about it because I know it's coming soon," she says in narration as she walks through a graveyard. So moments like these, for Michel, are as important as those lighthearted reveries and glances through old photo albums with a friend.
There are dark corridors of the past explored, but Gondry isn't going so far as, for example, Zwigoff's film on Crumb. He has too much imagination and an eye for joy that it's just not possible to be too gloomy. He loves this woman and hopes that if we don't love her by the end (and she's for the most part just a painfully normal grandmother, probably nicer than most old people or more understanding from being a teacher), we can admire her. It's on that strength alone I would recommend the film, but there are other little moments that will delight fans of Gondry's work. He throws in some stop-motion animation here and there, and is interested in the splitting up of footage and stock (digital to archive footage to 16mm) as we see a "home movie" being made in front of us.
But best of all is a random but inspired scene where he gets a bunch of schoolchildren who've been doing a Q&A with Suzette to put on Chroma-Key shirts and pants (these are the same thing as green-screen), and what we see is floating heads and torsos and little legs playing in the room and the yard. It's moments like these that make me smile in the movies, even if there is no real precise reason it should be in this story of Suzette's at all. 7.5/10
Without going as far to say Gondry made a great personal documentary, he did succeed on those terms I just mentioned. After a short time (and not including a kind of in-jokey opening story at the dinner table with Suzette laughing every other minute), we get into the story of this woman, Michel's Aunt, who lives in a rural village in France, and taught as a schoolteacher, raising her two children (her son, Jean-Yves, gets more time than the daughter, though she is mentioned and perhaps is on screen from time to time), and just living in a town like she did and the places she taught at. Gondry takes his small film crew to film some of these places, now mostly demolished or turned into homes, and he even goes to a rather touching extent of making up a projection room and screens a film (as used to be the place at the old school).
Sometimes these stories Suzette, now old and almost if not completely blind, are really amusing and just completely down to earth. We also hear about those she took care of, like Jean-Yves, and about his coming out of the closet (this is talked about in such a matter of fact, or just uncomplicated, way that it's sobering and heartfelt), and about when she took care of her grandkids (or maybe it was another third-generation 12 year old kid) in New York City for a year in 2005 or 2006. Some of these details could be made clearer, but it's hard to look at that as a big bad against the movie when Gondry takes such care in giving her time to speak, clearly, and go through the pages and other things in memory. Indeed the film reminded me of that wonderful film of his, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as a person looks through the myriad of memories, good and bad, and a train set (one of which that Jean-Yves might have made in his day as a hobby) is used as a transition device from year to year from the 1950s to the 1980's.
One of the bad memories that comes to light is the circumstances surrounding the death of Suzette's husband very suddenly in the 70's. She found out on a Monday and didn't tell her kids until two days later (she gives a reason as one of them had very important exams and would be completely devastated - the other one, Jean-Yves, was devastated, and it led to his nervous breakdown some time later). She tells this with great sorrow but as a fact of what happened; Suzette misses her husband, but at the same time is philosophical about death. "I only think about it because I know it's coming soon," she says in narration as she walks through a graveyard. So moments like these, for Michel, are as important as those lighthearted reveries and glances through old photo albums with a friend.
There are dark corridors of the past explored, but Gondry isn't going so far as, for example, Zwigoff's film on Crumb. He has too much imagination and an eye for joy that it's just not possible to be too gloomy. He loves this woman and hopes that if we don't love her by the end (and she's for the most part just a painfully normal grandmother, probably nicer than most old people or more understanding from being a teacher), we can admire her. It's on that strength alone I would recommend the film, but there are other little moments that will delight fans of Gondry's work. He throws in some stop-motion animation here and there, and is interested in the splitting up of footage and stock (digital to archive footage to 16mm) as we see a "home movie" being made in front of us.
But best of all is a random but inspired scene where he gets a bunch of schoolchildren who've been doing a Q&A with Suzette to put on Chroma-Key shirts and pants (these are the same thing as green-screen), and what we see is floating heads and torsos and little legs playing in the room and the yard. It's moments like these that make me smile in the movies, even if there is no real precise reason it should be in this story of Suzette's at all. 7.5/10
