The Plough (Le Grand Chariot) [2023]

 Love, family, friendship and the passion for one’s craft were the overarching themes in The Plough, another delicately textured entry to the quintessential Garrelian universe, with its interplay of melancholy and sensuousness, delineations of bohemian artists and drifting lovers with intimate brushstrokes, romantic entanglements and infidelities (portrayed with restraint, the messy repercussions notwithstanding), understated elegy to the irrevocable passing of time, and, most importantly, the inherently self-reflexive form. Autofiction has been a running thread in his filmography – stringing together tapestries informed by intensely personal facets from his life – which his latest work embraced with understated ardour. The minimalist narrative is centred on a family-run puppeteer troupe – adored paterfamilias (Aurélien Recoing); his children Louis (Louis Garrel), Martha (Esther Garrel) and Lena (Lena Garrel); and aged grandmother (Francine Bergé) – who’re bound to this charmingly antiquated artform. When the father suddenly dies, however, the group starts drifting apart – Louis quits to pursue career in acting; Martha, unable to move on, decides to run the show along with the politically active Lena despite the acute financial woes; Peter (Damien Mongin), Louis’ mercurial friend who’d joined the group, renews his self-destructive tryst with painting; and the eccentric granny, a left-wing nonconformist, starts slipping into dementia. Garrel’s first film in colour since the exquisite A Burning Hot Summer, it gently nodded to his late father Maurice who was a puppeteer before becoming an actor; furthermore, the siblings were played by his own children; Aurélien’s father Alain, meanwhile, was Maurice’s colleague during their puppeteering days. Mortality was a recurring motif too; aside from the two onscreen deaths in it – captured with wry equanimity – renowned screenwriter and Garrel’s frequent collaborator Jean-Claude Carrière died during the scripting stage.

Director: Philippe Garrel

Genre: Drama/Family Drama/Film a Clef

Language: French

Country: France