A few friendly words go a long way

HIS tiny little drama is a delightful story about how a little bit of kindness can go a long way to changing your outlook on the world.

It turns on the charm right from the get-go with touches of humour in unexpected places and, even when the ending is a bit treacly, the two leads wrap themselves around your heart.

It’s a story about love and affection between two seemingly very different people, but above all it is a story that cherishes words.

The French film is wonderfully

TLA TETE EN

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subtitled, so you catch the language nuances no matter which language you speak.

Gerard Depardieu plays lumbering gardener Germain, whom everyone treats like a sweet but dim-witted oaf. He strikes up an unlikely relationship with the much older Margueritte.

He is semi-literate, while she is very refined and clearly steeped in a lifetime of reading, but she looks beyond the oafish exterior to find a clear mind that sees to the heart of matters.

As she slowly persuades him to cherish words on the page as she does, she makes a firm friend and his friends start to notice a change.

Germain’s relationship with his own mother is complicated and more than a little tragic, as flashbacks show that she resents her son’s very existence and made his childhood a living hell.

We see a little of the life in urban France as opposed to the city life we usually see in films, and it is a treat to watch two masters in action.

Depardieu gets to work with Gisele Casadesus who started working with Comedie Francaise way back in the 1930s.

She is like a fragile butterfly that touches Germain and turns on the charm without hamming it up.