DIALOGUE AVEC MON JARDINIER (CONVERSATIONS WITH MY GARDENER)

France, 2007, 109 minutes, Colour.
Daniel Auteuil, Jean Pierre Darroussin, Fannie Cottencon, Alexia Barlier, Hiam Abbass.
Directed by Jean Becker.

There are not many films about strong and deep adult friendships. Michael Radford's Il Postino was one, the friendship between Nobel prizewinning poet, Pablo Neruda, and the postman on the Italian island where he lived in exile from Chile. This time the friendship is between a painter and his gardener.

We soon learn that the two men were friends in school together but the artist was sent to boarding school and they lost contact after a prank with an exploding birthday cake. Leo, the gardener, has answered an ad placed by the artist who has left the city and returned to his mother's home and wants to clear some of the land and create a vegetable garden. He is also in the throes of a divorce (his fault) and tensions with his daughter.

Daniel Auteuil makes the artist (not such a good one on the evidence of some of his paintings) more sympathetic than he really is. He pleads with his wife, pleads with his daughter but keeps up some of the friendships which threatened his marriage. He also engages in a caustic conversation with a pretentious art critic – where he presumes that he is an arbiter of taste and honesty. However, he mellows in his conversations with Leo, in reminiscing with him about his life, in shared activities like fishing, in helping him through his terminal cancer. He pays a final tribute to Leo by painting his wife (Hiam Abbass) and exhibits a series of paintings of simple tools and vegetables that were Leo's world.

Sometimes, despite himself, the artist is petty bourgeois and condescending in his approach to life and people.

However, the film really belongs to Jean-Pierre? Darroussin as Leo. He is a good man, a simple man in the best sense who is truly happy (even though the local plumber was chosen instead of him for a husband by the girl he was in love with when young and he detests the plumber - and the high prices he justifiably charges), and who loves what he does. He has a kindly wisdom, a tolerance for the artist and, by the osmosis of friendship, he makes the artist a better man.

A particularly French film in its love for dialogue and in its sensibilities about friendship and about art.

Originally, the book was just a series of talks by the gardener through which a wider story was revealed. The film opens up these monologues into an attractive story. A comparison could be made with the same method for the fine and literate New Zealand/British film Dean Spanley with Jeremy Northam and Sam Neill.

1.A film about friendship, respect, adult intimacy?

2.The French style, the countryside, the house, the city? The dialogue and the strength of conversation between the two central characters? The musical score, opera excerpts, Mozart?

3.The title, the French with the emphasis on single dialogue, the English with conversations? The expectations, amongst friends, master employer, the move to equality?

4.The portrait of the painter, in his parents’ house, leaving the city, busy, the gardener coming, the painter’s mistake, the advertisement, their talk, reminiscing about the past, the flashback to the exploding cake? The introduction of their past stories, the painter going to boarding school, the gardener staying in the village?

5.The painter and his art, the separation from his wife, her wanting a divorce, his admitting his fault? In the city, meeting his wife, the meals, the discussions, her disbelief in his attitudes? His daughter, her taking sides, the later visit, her boyfriend, the father’s attitude and her anger and leaving? The painter’s hopes – and his fears that his hopes would not be fulfilled? Taking over the house, the plan to grow the vegetables?

6.The painter’s life, the exhibition, his meeting Magda, the past relationship with her, her boyfriend, his pretentious comments, the artist and his scathing attack on him, his own snobbery? Taking Magda back to his house, her presence, in the garden, sunbaking, meeting the gardener? Her reasons for leaving?

7.The gardener as a man, his age, the fulfilment of his life, his regrets that his girlfriend did not choose him, his attitude towards the electrician who married her? His own marriage, children, the painter getting his son a job? His work, unlike the painter not having any other options in mind, his love for the land, growing vegetables? The scythe, cutting the grass, planting the vegetables, watering them? Taking the painter to the shop to buy the scythe? Teaching the painter about the land?

8.The success of the garden, the vegetables, the hard work, the relaxations, the conversations between the two, their going fishing, the large fish and throwing it back?

9.The dialogue and the conversations, the gardener and his wisdom, earthy, sensible, simple and no complications? The artist and his listening?

10.The gardener’s illness, the response of the artist, taking him to the doctor, the diagnosis, the options, his continuing to work, lying down in the grass to work the vegetable patch?

11.The painter, the gardener’s wife, doing the portrait of her? His painting the simple things of the gardener’s life, the knife and the string …? The final exhibition?

12.The nature of friendship, sharing, equality and mutual benefit?