Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

One Provençal farmer's desire to grow carnations leads to the untimely deaths of four men, the near ruin of an entire village, and the shocking revelation of a long kept secret. Jean de Florette and Manon des Source (Manon of the Spring) (both 1987) are two truly great French films that together tell the story of a multigenerational family tragedy that ends with a rebirth.

Jean de Florette

In the first film, César Soubeyran (Yves Montand) is spellbinding as a cunning and amoral rural bourgeois who will stop at nothing to support the ambition of his only remaining relative, Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil), to strike it rich growing carnations. What they need is water for irrigation, but the only land with a spring falls by inheritance to a hunchbacked city tax collector, Jean de Florette (Gerard Depardieu), who plunges headlong into an idyll doomed to end badly at the hands of César's and Ugolin's sabotage. Jean's young daughter, Manon, is a silent witness to their duplicity.

Montand takes acting honors for his utterly believable portrayal of naked ambition furthered by manslaughter, bullying, facile lies, and sabotage. Auteuil is simultaneously disgusting and tragic as the dimwitted nephew. Depardieu also turns in a stellar performance as a man whose sunny optimism and trust of strangers and books are slowly chipped away by a series of calamities that plunge him into a kind of insanity.

Manon des Source (Manon of the Spring)

The second film takes up several years after the end of the first. Ugolin is successfully growing carnations on the land purchased for pennies on the dollar from Jean's widow, the spring, which had somehow disappeared during Jean's tenancy having been miraculously restored. César insists that it is time for Ugolin to take a wife. Manon, now in her late teens and played by the strikingly beautiful Emmanuelle Beart, has remained to live with a local family and wander the hills as a shepherdess, hating both the Soubeyrans and the villagers who never came to the aid of her father because of their xenophobia. Naturally, Ugolin takes a fancy to her.

When Manon accidentally comes upon the hidden spring that feeds the local village, she sees a way to exact revenge on the villagers and the Soubeyrans. The ensuing water crisis forces all secrets into the open, including one stunningly ironic revelation about the true Soubeyran heir.

Shakespearian Tragedy

The tragedies in these films are classical in that they result inevitably from the characters' tragic flaws: strong personality characteristics that are double edged swords.

Jean's optimism combined with his faith in theory and books allows him to achieve considerable early success in his endeavors, but the same optimism and reliance on theory blind him to a fundamental problem--water--the lack of which seals his ruin.

On the other hand, César, who ultimately suffers an equally great tragedy, has always achieved success through singlemindedness, cunning, bullying, a facility with lies, and working behind the scenes. These traits blind him to a truth, the ultimate realization of which leaves him a broken man.

Other Stuff

Both films are visual masterpieces, filmed lovingly in the villages, farms, vineyards and estates of rural Provence. The musical score is a perfect complement to the imagery. As is often the case, both of these films won major prizes in Europe, but were completely ignored in America.

Neither film really holds up on its own, especially the second. Plan on watching both with not too much time between, as some of the interrelationships get a bit complicated.

For my reviews of other foreign films, check out:

Best foreign films: mid 1980s through 1990s
Trois Coleurs: Bleu (Blue)
Trois Coleurs: Rouge (Red)
Saura's Carmen
Amores Perros


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older