One of the least known films of the French New Wave perhaps because the subject matter is so old-fashioned like something you might have seen in the French cinema of the thirties or forties, (even the setting, Marseille, is the same as in Pagnol's famous trilogy). Berthe, (Sylvie, a lovely performance), has been widowed in her eighties and, for the first time in her life, begins to live much to the consternation of her family.
Not a great deal happens; its dramas are fairly small-scale but it's definitely a charmer and there's not a jot of sentimentality on view. Sylvie underplays beautifully and she's backed by an excellent cast while director Rene Allio films it with a documentary-like attention to detail. OK, it was never going to light up the cinema in the way that the films of Godard or Truffaut did but there is so much here to like and to discover.
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