A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Wednesday, June 17, 2026

A Week's Vacation (Bertrand Tavernier, 1980)

Michel Galabru and Nathalie Baye in A Week's Vacation

Cast: Nathalie Baye, Gérard Lanvin, Flore Fitzgerald, Michel Galabru, Jean Dasté, Marie-Louise Ebeli, Philippe Delague, Geneviève Vauzeilles, Philippe Léotard, Philippe Noiret, Jean-Claude Durand. Screenplay: Bertrand Tavernier, Colo Tavernier, Marie-François Hans. Cinematography: Pierre-William Glenn. Production design: Jean-Baptiste Poirot. Film editing: Armand Psenny. Music: Pierre Papadiamandis. 

Laurence (Nathalie Baye) is 31, just the right age for burnout and a mid-life crisis to set in. It happens as her boyfriend, Pierre (Gérard Lanvin), is driving her to her job as a schoolteacher. Something about the routine, and perhaps Pierre's rough, quippy manner, suddenly hits her the wrong way, and she bolts from the car. She winds up at the doctor, who tells her to take a break. So for the next week, Laurence takes some time off, in a kind of staycation, to reflect on her job, her relationship with Pierre, and her aging parents. But it's not that easy to take a vacation from any of them. She still lives with Pierre, she has homework to grade before her scheduled return, and encounters with her students and their parents intrude. She becomes more involved with one parent in particular, Mancheron (Michel Galabru), the proprietor of a small cafe who is concerned about his son. Bertrand Tavernier's lovely, low-key film follows Laurence through the week, sometimes with flashbacks, and while it ends with her acceptance of life as it is, we feel that she has become stronger. Baye is marvelous in the role, and Tavernier maintains a delicate balance of sadness and comedy throughout. 

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