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“Manon des Sources” – movie review


The old country and its romantic frills; lonely Jeep slowly rattling through the rickety roads, raising a smoke on its trail and dropping a fleck of dust on gorgeous lassies of the French land. The opening scene where a running tap is filling an open public tank with sheepish looking old ladies sitting atop a platform (gossiping about nothing important) evokes in one, something anachronistic, a feeling of old and arcane act of movie making, as it was in seventies and eighties. Tall buildings with their winter shadows casting on each other as the sun rolls over to the other side of the horizon,  seem to represent the village as a narrow star cornered in a chaotic galaxy. The peoples of the planets that inhabit this narrow constellation, enjoy tranquil bliss that will regress into chaos any moment now. The scene that holds the opening with a semblance of rare quietude is about to find its delusion cracked open. Chaos is incumbent.
Lovely Emmanuelle Beart, as a romantic young girl, in the love of country side, is at her lovable best. Beset with her father's loss, she takes to herding sheep; through the fields in the day, and the barn at night, she is seen in a mood of helpless complex. Running about with the sheep, dancing in the fields and frolicking in the pond, she plays the merry country girl with glee and aptitude that reminded me of "La Belle Noiseuse".
Men who sit up after work with cards before them, extol virtues of girl's father and bemoan the impression her beauty bore upon each of them. "no I won't tell you about her. Because she is my first secret love" insists the young man with a gun slinging by his arm side and a half broken front tooth. It almost feels like reading a D.H. Lawrence novel; lonely country men, their vicissitudes, practices and paradigms.
The besotted stitches the shepherd's ribbon into his heart; leaves her, rabbits and birds in the knotted traps; watches her bathing naked in the pond, heaves and coughs as he pitifully runs after her, confesses his love between huge gutturals and poor self aggrandisements. Emmanuel Beart plays the proud young girl with great enchantment; she mutely draws the audience into an unalterable quest to find reason. She intrigues you with her playful rhythmic wandering about the hills, not a word uttered and yet, she corrupts the minds of many in the village.
She opens her mouth for the first time, and it is to let out the pain and angst - learning of the deceptive friendship that her father was dragged into. Her embracing the old tree trunk, in her devastated lonely depression, is to be remembered, for rarely does a movie gorge on lucid stillness for over an hour and still maintain to entertain you.
My favourite scene is the meeting with the expert on 'ground water' presiding along with the council of village representatives. As the expert explains the nature of cavities and calcites and how the spring that supplied water to the village has dried up for no reason. Between the banter and agitation, he contends "you have no will over nature. You better farm elsewhere". Watching this movie, a well educated urban young man that I am, could not help but revere the marvellous progress we have made today. Ah! The plight of villagers. More importantly, I thought, the scene was very well perched in the movie, as regards to the timing.
What would a man do, when the girl (in whose infatuation, he stitched a pink ribbon, skewering the skin of his chest) is pale with angst, when tears roll out of her shell blue eyes, and when she smothers him with burning hate, when she wishes to avenge her father's death? Life in the small village with its romantic side, also has its alternate side – word gets around real quick.
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