Word: morreau
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...MORREAU SEEMS INTENT ON sprinkling dark, meaningful images throughout the plot's progress. Radio bulletins and brief conversations about war interrupt the film's flow. And the morose, seductive presence of a Jewish interloper in the village too obviously suggests the eventual fate of his people. The Jew, a young and handsome doctor from Paris, enters everyone's life. He has an affair with Marie's mother and entrances the young Marie. (At least Morreau had the common sense not to let the film become but another variation of the Pretty Baby theme...
...doctor's Jewish identity seems to be the source of his problems and his effect on everyone: Morreau's simplistic attempt to portray the resulting tensions fails because her images are too stereotypically flat. More of a presence than a character, the doctor's black suit and ever present dark car too heavily suggest his mysterious nature...
...Morreau turns Marie's mother (Edith Clever) into a sexually one dimensional character; the only purpose her presence serves is to have passionate interludes with her husband and with the doctor...
...Morreau leaves questions unanswered that might explain the mother's passionate nature. The movie's only believable relationship--between Marie and her grandmother--develops because of the sensitive performance of the actresses. Signoret and Chauveau present experience and youth naturally. Their closeness blossoms during their midnight escapades into a lush garden for magical powders. But Morreau spoils even this relationship by miring the girl in an ambiguous ending. Left with a distraught vision of Marie and her grandmother standing by, helpless and confused. We don't know whether Marie's unhappiness will prove transitory or permanent...
...course adolescence is traumatic for most young women. Yet Morreau's story doesn't ring true, since she never decides how strongly Marie's development should govern the entire plot. All women eventually get their periods--but they're certainly not all like those of 12-year-old Marie, whose initiation into womanhood begins with blood dripping down...