Conversations With My Gardener (DVD)

In Jean Becker's Conversations With My Gardner a middle-aged landscape painter, played by Daniel Auteuil, recently separated, who has lived for many years in Paris, returns to the house in the country where he grew up and which he's inherited from his mother. He hires a local gardener, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, and soon discovers they were best friends at school together. Based on a book by Henri Cueco, this is mainly a two-hander for the talents of Auteuil and Darroussin. As two old friends, they spend a lot of time talking, philosophizing, and reminiscing. This relaxed and in some ways quintessentially French film is appealing simply because it is content to explore, in a gentle way, a long-standing friendship. As the seasons change eternal truths come into perspective.