LIFE IS A LONG QUIET RIVER

France, 1988, 90 minutes, Colour.
Benoit Magimal, Valerie Lalonde.
Directed by Etienne Chatiliez.

Life is a Long Quiet River was very popular in its native France and popular throughout the world. It was the first cinema feature by former advertising film-maker Etienne Chatiliez. He co-wrote the screenplay with Florence Quentin. (Chatiliez went on to make a very successful feature, the ironic Tatie Danielle.) The story is somewhat tongue-in-cheek and fanciful.

It is revealed that a nurse, infatuated with the local obstetrician, twelve years earlier, on a Christmas night, had switched children for families, one rich, one poor. Twelve years later, again to spite the doctor, she decides to reveal the truth. Each family reacts in a different way. The rich family want to help their real son and send their daughter back to the poor family. They are full of right intentions, have the typical French bourgeois morality but unable to see what is going on with their daughter and her precocious behaviour, their eldest son and his selfish ,liaisons, their newly found son and his taking things from their house to his other family. The poorer family is also caricatured with gross behaviour, exploitive: the mother and her control, the father and his simply observing, the oldest daughter sexually promiscuous, taking the things that their son brings back to them and selling then. They are also somewhat racist and superior to their kindly Arab greengrocer neighbour.

While the film satirises both the middle class and the working class, it also has insight into characters with ironic touches. There are many amusing sequences, some satire on a modern priest, his campaigns for money and his style of hymn singing, guitar and all. The film raises issues of inheritance, of genetic influence, of social conditioning. The film could be called a satire of class distinctions.

1. Interesting and entertaining French comedy? Realism? fantasy? For French audiences? World wide audiences?

2. The first film of the director? His writing and directing (and commercial background)? The French city, the affluent world, the poorer world? The interaction between both? The seaside sequences? The musical score?

3. The title, the comment by the children that life is not a long quiet river and that one must expect all kinds of shallows, rapids and difficulties?

4. The focus on the Doctor, his work as an obstetrician? His wife and her watching television? The breakdown of communication between them? His drinking, going to work? The devotion from Josette? His spurning her? The flashback memories of twelve years earlier, Christmas night, her infatuation with him, his rejection? Her decision to switch the babies? The consequences? The irony of the doctor's wife dying, being buried? Josette and her advances? The doctor's collapse? Her taking him to the seaside and having him all to herself - despite his collapse?


5. The de Quesnoy family? The father as a director of the company, his wife and her church connections? The visit of the priest? Charity, concerts and rehearsals? The regularity of their household (ravioli night on Monday)? Their children, their concern about Bernadette - and her dressing herself up and using makeup?

6. The contrast with the Groseille family (literally raspberry or gooseberry)? The father and the background of the Algerian war, out of work? The family and no money, the electricity cut off? Their relationship with Harmed and his wife? Roselyne and her sexual connections? Franc as a petty crook? Momo and his place in the household?

7. The news and the repercussions for each family? Their seeming to accept things at face value? Their moral decisions? Sending the children each to the other family? Momo and his place with the Groseille family, his going to the LeQuesnoys? Their welcoming him? His tidying himself up, behaving admirably with them? Taking things back home for the other family? The outings, the relationship with Paul? With Bernadette? The children handling their brothers and sisters? The Groseille family, the mother and her dominance, Roselyne and her sexual experience, calling for Paul, meeting him in the paddock, going out with him? Bernadette and her not wanting to be part of this household, her going back to her family, compulsive washing, not wanting to eat? Her running away, on the bus, the police getting her, her declaring that she is orphan?

10. The reactions of the parents: the middle class family and their wanting everything with decorum, the effect on the father and his discovering that Paul had sexual liaisons, that Therese, the maid, is pregnant? The mother denying this – but taking to drink? The Groseille family and their carrying on as normal?

11. Rumed, with the family, playing cards? His greengrocer shop? Friendly with Momo and the continued friendship after his change of fortune?

12. Themes of family, genetic influence, socialisation? The film's emphasis on social conditioning on the children? Exploration of French values, hypocrisies, prejudices, greed? The children and the next generation?