Part of the Picture: Family Plot

FAMILY PLOT

OCT 25, 2008 – THE UNCLE AND NEPHEW WHOSE ACTIONS trigger the tragic chain of events in Claude Berri’s Jean de Florette are the proverbial chalk and cheese. The older man (Cesar Soubeyran, played by Yves Montand) is a sophisticate and a dreamer, who wants to bring back the glory days of the Soubeyrans. He hopes his nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil), now that the latter is out of the army, will restore the Soubeyran orchard, the way it was in his father’s time – and as he outlines his plans, his eloquence matches his excitement. “200 fig trees, 200 plum trees, 200 almond trees,” he sighs. “A thousand trees, planted in rows, 30 feet apart. It’ll be like a cathedral, and every farmer will make the sign of the cross.” But the coarse Ugolin can see only the practical aspect of this vision. “Listen, Papet,” he warns, “We already have too many plums, peaches, apricots. We end up feeding them to the pigs.”

Even when it comes to women, uncle and nephew subscribe to opposing philosophies. Cesar is an old bachelor, and the film hints that he’s still nursing the void in his heart left by the love of his life, Florette, who moved to Crespin (when Cesar was far away, in an African military hospital) and married Lionel, the blacksmith. Ugolin, however, is no such slave to grand passion. When his uncle suggests that he get married, and that there are plenty of girls around who’d love to marry a Soubeyran, Ugolin replies, as practically as ever, “I have no mule, since I’m using yours. I have no hens or goats, since they’re too much trouble. I don’t wear socks, since they itch. So why would I need a wife?” Cesar is taken aback. “What about love?” he demands. And Ugolin assures the old man, “When I’m in Aubagne, I drop in on those girls. That clears my mind. For 15 francs a month, I can choose any girl.”

Where uncle and nephew see eye to eye, however, is in Ugolin’s plan of cultivating carnations – though, even here, Ugolin’s concerns are more immediate, more practical (he needs 15,000 francs for the project), while Cesar is after the long term, the big picture. After agreeing to fund his nephew, he waves away Ugolin’s expressions of gratitude. “It’s not for you,” he says. “It’s for all Soubeyrans, buried ones and future ones.” And as carnations need a lot of water, they plan to snap up the adjacent land, which harbours a spring. The owner of the land is dead, and they hope the heirs will sell the farm. And to ensure that the price stays reasonable, they block the opening of the spring with cement. The new owner (Jean Cadoret, played by Gérard Depardieu) is a city dweller, a tax collector, and a hunchback, and Cesar doesn’t think for an instant that this man of means will choose to settle down to farm in a land with no water.

That’s where he’s wrong. Jean refuses to leave, and with his newfangled notions of farming, he becomes a perennial thorn in the sides of uncle and nephew. Cesar tells Ugolin to act friendly, to gain Jean’s trust, so that he’ll be the first person offered the farm when Jean packs up (with his wife Aimee and daughter Manon) and leaves for good. But it’s not just this advice that prompts Ugolin to offer Jean the use of his well for drinking water. As he explains to his uncle later, “Plugging up the spring was no crime. It was for my carnations. But if they drink the cistern water, they’ll all three die. It would always be on my conscience.” Ugolin may be a schemer who believes it’s his God-given right to grow carnations on Jean’s land, but he’s not altogether inhuman. He doesn’t want those carnations to bloom over the corpses of his rivals.

Ugolin’s humanity pushes itself to the fore again, later, when drought hits the land and Jean – thanks to the blocked-up spring – is slowly facing ruin. Cesar remarks, “Another week of sunshine and he’s finished.” Ugolin tells his uncle, somewhat sympathetically, that Jean had requested the loan of his mule. Cesar bursts out, “Idiot! Your mule would save him! It can carry 100 gallons a day!” Ugolin persists, “You told me to be friendly, so I drank his white wine and called him Monsieur Jean, and he’s become my friend.” Cesar snaps back, “You want to grow carnations or make friends? If you start to strangle a cat, finish it off!” And you have to wonder if this is just another instance of uncle and nephew proving to be chalk and cheese in temperament, or if there’s something more to Cesar’s ruthless desire to finish off Jean – the fact, perhaps, that (as the title tells us) Jean is the son of Florette, who broke Cesar’s heart and, along with it, his hopes of siring a string of Soubeyrans.

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Posted in: Cinema: Foreign