Rating: 
Summary: Scrupulous but unrewarding
Review: "My son is a surgeon, my daughter a lawyer. I have children who achieved something. I took much care of them when they were young". (The mother, afer her children sent her off to a home for the aged)."I saw to it that she has a tv-set in her room".(The daughter, trying to soothe her conscience). Emilie (Catherine Deneuve) and her brother Antoine (Daniel Auteuil) have not seen each other in three years, but their mother's (Marthe Villalonga) stroke brings them together again. Emilie decides to assume her responsibility and lodge her mother at her house, a solution that makes no one happy. Emilie's marriage exists on paper only and she has difficulties in establishing personal contacts with her grown-up children. Her mother is not very sociable either, and feels like an alien element in her daughter's family. Christmas arrives and when Antoine's quarrel with Emilie's husband turns into a brawl Emilie decides to give up her marriage and her mother packs and moves in with her son. But their living together fails equally. She has the feeling the her son is angry with her: "Have I kept him from living? Little pleasures?". She decides to go home. Summer arrives and the second stroke. The mother is outwardly composed when she takes place in the car that drives her to her new home. She is so resigned that she killed all her chicken before leaving her house for the last time. She shows no interest for the landscape or her children's incessant talking. Antoine tries to convince his sister to go to live with him: "We have two brains from one womb" but she hesitates: "I'm afraid of you, Antoine!". The siblings buckle under the nervous strain while their mother is nearly frantic: Her physical condition is serious enough, but the company of senile and mentally disturbed patients finishes her off... Ah! Why can't director Andre Techine be a little bit more like Claude Chabrol? Chabrol, in Techine's place would have built up an ominous atmosphere and let the audience suspect that something alarming and unspeakable is going on...But Techine has the bad habit of waving a bait (incest) in front of the audience and then leading them up the garden path. The film is well constructed (the four seasons) and the shots look like a perfect dream. The subject - two siblings don't know how to handle their mother and their own fear of old age - can't fail to touch and the performances of the elder generation are marvelous. Villalonga is resolute but ultimately embittered and her dogged attempts to retain her mental faculties are heartbreaking. Deneuve gives one of her greatest performances: warm and noble, trying to give proof of moral strength, outraged to be forced in the defensive and feel guilty about things she cannot change. Sometimes we catch Auteuil at an "arriere pensee" when he unmasks his feelings in his cryptic monologues. He becomes more and more erratic and suddenly he cracks up. But this is just one side of the film. The scenes with the younger generation seem not directed at all, as if the director told them: Folks, you're free. Do your own thing. The scene when Deneuve's son invites his girlfriend to strip in front of his sister (Deneuve's own daughter Chiara) is especially repellent, and Deneuve's "bed-scene" on a park-bench is sickening and unmotivated (The motive was of course to pep a static film up). MA SAISON PREFEREE is a very unrewarding film. High production values but big disappointment. I wish this film were trash, so that I can trample on it. Since it isn't I feel blackmailed...
Rating:
Summary: Scrupulous but unrewarding
Review: "My son is a surgeon, my daughter a lawyer. I have children who achieved something. I took much care of them when they were young". (The mother, afer her children sent her off to a home for the aged). "I saw to it that she has a tv-set in her room".(The daughter, trying to soothe her conscience). Emilie (Catherine Deneuve) and her brother Antoine (Daniel Auteuil) have not seen each other in three years, but their mother's (Marthe Villalonga) stroke brings them together again. Emilie decides to assume her responsibility and lodge her mother at her house, a solution that makes no one happy. Emilie's marriage exists on paper only and she has difficulties in establishing personal contacts with her grown-up children. Her mother is not very sociable either, and feels like an alien element in her daughter's family. Christmas arrives and when Antoine's quarrel with Emilie's husband turns into a brawl Emilie decides to give up her marriage and her mother packs and moves in with her son. But their living together fails equally. She has the feeling the her son is angry with her: "Have I kept him from living? Little pleasures?". She decides to go home. Summer arrives and the second stroke. The mother is outwardly composed when she takes place in the car that drives her to her new home. She is so resigned that she killed all her chicken before leaving her house for the last time. She shows no interest for the landscape or her children's incessant talking. Antoine tries to convince his sister to go to live with him: "We have two brains from one womb" but she hesitates: "I'm afraid of you, Antoine!". The siblings buckle under the nervous strain while their mother is nearly frantic: Her physical condition is serious enough, but the company of senile and mentally disturbed patients finishes her off... Ah! Why can't director Andre Techine be a little bit more like Claude Chabrol? Chabrol, in Techine's place would have built up an ominous atmosphere and let the audience suspect that something alarming and unspeakable is going on...But Techine has the bad habit of waving a bait (incest) in front of the audience and then leading them up the garden path. The film is well constructed (the four seasons) and the shots look like a perfect dream. The subject - two siblings don't know how to handle their mother and their own fear of old age - can't fail to touch and the performances of the elder generation are marvelous. Villalonga is resolute but ultimately embittered and her dogged attempts to retain her mental faculties are heartbreaking. Deneuve gives one of her greatest performances: warm and noble, trying to give proof of moral strength, outraged to be forced in the defensive and feel guilty about things she cannot change. Sometimes we catch Auteuil at an "arriere pensee" when he unmasks his feelings in his cryptic monologues. He becomes more and more erratic and suddenly he cracks up. But this is just one side of the film. The scenes with the younger generation seem not directed at all, as if the director told them: Folks, you're free. Do your own thing. The scene when Deneuve's son invites his girlfriend to strip in front of his sister (Deneuve's own daughter Chiara) is especially repellent, and Deneuve's "bed-scene" on a park-bench is sickening and unmotivated (The motive was of course to pep a static film up). MA SAISON PREFEREE is a very unrewarding film. High production values but big disappointment. I wish this film were trash, so that I can trample on it. Since it isn't I feel blackmailed...
Rating:
Summary: Another nice movie from France about human relationships.
Review: An unmistakably French film depicting an uncomfortably close relationship between sister (Deneuve, maybe not as good-looking as 30 years ago, but certainly better at acting now) and brother (Auteuil, cross between Jeremy Irons and Robert Deniro). The ending leaves little doubt about the troubling nature of their unbreakable bond.
Rating: 
Summary: Another brilliant film from Techine and Denueve
Review: Andre Techine creates another classic film with the always interesting Denueve and Auteuil. Saw this film twice in the theatre and fell in love with it more each time. The final "chapter" of the story, the one that explains the title of the film, is as sublime as anything put on film this decade. Deneuve is at the height of her acting prowess as well. Buy it!
Rating: 
Summary: Life in Avant Garde
Review: Catherine Deneuve's roles are sometimes so simple that she seems to walk through them. Little wonder then that her much acclaimed performance in this film seems nothing more than a casual day at the office. This is the first Deneuve movie I saw since 'Indochine', and though she did a great job in that, her work here both startled and bored me. Not that its a terrible performance, but 'Ma Saison Preferee' does not know what it wants to be. Its one of those open-ended loopy movies that will have art house critics discussing for hours, yet to a serious foreign language film viewer, it ultimately strikes one as a piece of pretentious fluff. The movie stands out in many ways though. It manages to extract a spectacular performance from Daniel Auteuil as the troubled brother, and makes history by introducing us to Deneuve's real life daughter, Chiara, who plays the role of, what else, the daughter. The story is rather simple. Catherine's marriage is dissolving, partly because of the presence of her mother in the house, and partly because she realizes that there is no spark between her husband and herself. There is also a pointless subplot between her son and her secretary, but upon retrospect, this storyline is so weak ...that its not even worth mentioning. Lets just say that we've seen Deneuve and Auteuil in far superior work than this. Auteuil's performance is perhaps the only reason we go on caring about the film. The main theme of the movie is the displacement of the mother - neither the son nor the daughter want to keep her, and she is packed off to a retirement home. When its evident that woman is slowly losing her mind and succumbing to her age, Deneuve and Auteuil play good children and take Mommy in again. With a storyline like this, its fairly evident what is about to happen. After the mother passes away, the family comes together once more, each debating around the table what their 'favorite season' is. Catherine then stands up and delivers a heartless poem and the credits roll. Thats about all. I wish I could say something positive about this movie. The only interesting thing about it remains the cinematography. France has rarely looked so gorgeous on film, and there are a few sweet and tender moments, but it doesn't really add up. Marthe Villalonga does a great job playing the sick mother - she is both wicked and has a genuine sense of humor, and as sickness takes over her, its hard not to care. Unfortunately, everytime we begin caring, there is a shift in narrative to the love lives of the children of the house, and this gets a bit grating. There are also certain inexplicable scenes. Granted that when a woman leaves her husband, she may be prone to act in ways alien to her, but when we see Catherine making out with a handsome French stranger on the gardens of the hospital, just because he expresses his interest (by walking up to her and hitching up her skirt) it gets to be a drag. ...This sort of spur-of-the-moment lovemaking is rather unbelievable. Chiara Mastroianni delivers a plausible performance - we will have to wait for her real screen debut to judge if she is an actress of any great capability. Anthony Prada, who plays Lucien, the son, is the typical French male teen, all too interested in his mothers' beautiful Algerian secretary, who is also associated in a pointless subplot with her own money laundering brother. Anthony, a local schoolboy who was roped into playing the role, has never made another movie thus far. This film reminded me of 'Up at the Villa' and other lazy pieces of that sort. Its not criminal to make a film this directionless, but what is tiring is the same old film making cliches that are incorporated time and time again in movies of this sort. I just saw 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg' a few days ago and rediscovered how wonderful French movies can be. 'Ma Saison Preferee' is a middling example of that. I went into this one expecting far too much, and all said and done, the only thing this film resembles is a soppy French mid-day soap opera that has no chance of making a second season.
Rating:
Summary: Good as far as it goes
Review: Interesting but somewhat cryptic family-dynamics saga presented with characteristic French warmth and some charm. Daniel Auteuil plays a brain surgeon in love with his big sister (Catherine Deneuve). Apparently he has been pining away for her for decades since they are now middle-aged. She's no longer interested in sex, and he apparently never was, since he never married and lived alone. Meanwhile mom, who loved him best, can't live alone anymore because of fainting spells, and so goes to live with Deneuve and her family. But that doesn't work out and Auteuil won't or can't take her in, and so they send her to a nursing home, which she hates. All this occasions brother and sister to spend some time together. They recall with fondness their childhood; and when she breaks up with her husband, little brother rents a nice apartment for himself and her, all the better to live happily ever after. Well, what a tease. That really doesn't happen. After a bit Deneuve gets seduced by a very aggressive and anonymous intern which reawakens her sexuality and makes her realize she can't live with her brother. And so she leaves him. He breaks into her house in an attempt to get her back.... I think Director André Téchiné did a good job with what he attempted, but could have attempted more. The cast is good, especially Marthe Villalonga as the mother and Deneuve, who has aged well. It's amusing to see that the cool and stately actress is still being sexually abused by the French directors for the audience. I wonder what they would have done if, instead of Hitchcock, et. al., THEY could have gotten their hands on Deneuve's cinematic American soul sister, Grace Kelly. It would have been interesting to see Grace Kelly in, say, Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid (1969) with Jean-Paul Belmondo instead of Deneuve. Or, how about Grace Kelly as "Belle de Jour"? But I digress.
Rating:
Summary: Good as far as it goes
Review: Interesting but somewhat cryptic family-dynamics saga presented with characteristic French warmth and some charm. Daniel Auteuil plays a brain surgeon in love with his big sister (Catherine Deneuve). Apparently he has been pining away for her for decades since they are now middle-aged. She's no longer interested in sex, and he apparently never was, since he never married and lived alone. Meanwhile mom, who loved him best, can't live alone anymore because of fainting spells, and so goes to live with Deneuve and her family. But that doesn't work out and Auteuil won't or can't take her in, and so they send her to a nursing home, which she hates. All this occasions brother and sister to spend some time together. They recall with fondness their childhood; and when she breaks up with her husband, little brother rents a nice apartment for himself and her, all the better to live happily ever after. Well, what a tease. That really doesn't happen. After a bit Deneuve gets seduced by a very aggressive and anonymous intern which reawakens her sexuality and makes her realize she can't live with her brother. And so she leaves him. He breaks into her house in an attempt to get her back.... I think Director André Téchiné did a good job with what he attempted, but could have attempted more. The cast is good, especially Marthe Villalonga as the mother and Deneuve, who has aged well. It's amusing to see that the cool and stately actress is still being sexually abused by the French directors for the audience. I wonder what they would have done if, instead of Hitchcock, et. al., THEY could have gotten their hands on Deneuve's cinematic American soul sister, Grace Kelly. It would have been interesting to see Grace Kelly in, say, Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid (1969) with Jean-Paul Belmondo instead of Deneuve. Or, how about Grace Kelly as "Belle de Jour"? But I digress.
Rating:
Summary: Oridnary Lives, Extraordinary Film
Review: Ma Saison Preferee takes the viewer into the seeming world of any ordinary modern French family, dealing with ordinary problems. However, Techine does such an excellent job developing the three dimensional aspects of his characters that one is left clamoring for more. Deneuve is wonderful, and Auteil is absolutely hilarious at times as her somewhat mal-adjusted, yet brilliant brother. The story, while exploring the frailty of human relationships, gives one hope. In spite of all of our dysfunctionality, we do live and we can love. While I enjoyed Auteil's performance in Un Coeur en Hiver, I liked his work in this film much more. His character is much more light-hearted and not so severe. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Reality Never Tasted So Good
Review: My Favorite Season is a film by Andre Techine. It depicts a dysfunctional French family as they come to grips with life in post-Vichy southern France. I'm kidding of course, the film has nothing to do with French Fascism, except in the sense that that period in history led up to the events depicted in the film, and if there had been no German occupation and Vichy government, this film would have been greatly different. As to the film, it is lyrical and hypnotic. If this is what the French think of as dysfunction, then I am moving to France, because dysfunction never tasted so sweet. This is one of the greatest movies ever made, and here's why: The performance of Catherine Deneuve. This was the first time I'd seen her in a movie, but I'd heard alot, well not alot, but some things about her, and, no actually I saw her in a stupid movie with John Malkovich, but in this movie I saw the raw hypnotic power of her stage presence. She doesn't have to do anything, and thank God, because the naturalness of her performance comes through. The thing that sets this movie apart is that it doesn't try to hard. This movie subtracted much of what goes into a modern American film, such as half-hearted attempts at plot, drama, action, good acting, etc... and created a story based on substance and momentum. The actors are effortless in their perfect portrayals of this so-called dysfunctional family. Que vive Le Maisson Preferee.
Rating:
Summary: Reality Never Tasted So Good
Review: My Favorite Season is a film by Andre Techine. It depicts a dysfunctional French family as they come to grips with life in post-Vichy southern France. I'm kidding of course, the film has nothing to do with French Fascism, except in the sense that that period in history led up to the events depicted in the film, and if there had been no German occupation and Vichy government, this film would have been greatly different. As to the film, it is lyrical and hypnotic. If this is what the French think of as dysfunction, then I am moving to France, because dysfunction never tasted so sweet. This is one of the greatest movies ever made, and here's why: The performance of Catherine Deneuve. This was the first time I'd seen her in a movie, but I'd heard alot, well not alot, but some things about her, and, no actually I saw her in a stupid movie with John Malkovich, but in this movie I saw the raw hypnotic power of her stage presence. She doesn't have to do anything, and thank God, because the naturalness of her performance comes through. The thing that sets this movie apart is that it doesn't try to hard. This movie subtracted much of what goes into a modern American film, such as half-hearted attempts at plot, drama, action, good acting, etc... and created a story based on substance and momentum. The actors are effortless in their perfect portrayals of this so-called dysfunctional family. Que vive Le Maisson Preferee.
| 
