The Town Is Quiet

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Drama
Review: "The Town is Quiet" is one of the most powerfull dramas I've ever seen. Even though it's been about half a year since I've seen it I'm still thinking and talking about it.
It is a movie that seems unbearable at the beggining. It seems too sad but as the story builds itself you realize how full of life this movie actually is.
The music is great: Janice Joplin songs are played at just the right time.
"The Town is Quiet" is a great achievement.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Drama
Review: "The Town is Quiet" is one of the most powerfull dramas I've ever seen. Even though it's been about half a year since I've seen it I'm still thinking and talking about it.
It is a movie that seems unbearable at the beggining. It seems too sad but as the story builds itself you realize how full of life this movie actually is.
The music is great: Janice Joplin songs are played at just the right time.
"The Town is Quiet" is a great achievement.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling, sad, beautiful
Review: AN expansive, ambitious film portraying the interconnected lives of a diverse cast of characters in the French port city of Marseille.
Visually beautiful and thematically rich, La Ville est Tranquille (The Town is Quiet) delves into issues of family life, politics, drug addiction, race relations in multicultural France and the social impacts of aggressive, corporate-driven economic reform.
Director Robert Guédiguian works with more or less the same ensemble cast in each of his films, led by wife Ariane Arascude, who plays this film's principal protagonist.
Though his work appears mournful at the ailing state of the French revolutionary tenets of Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood in his home city, the director displays passion for his subject matter. Although the lives of the film's central characters are full of sadness, as a viewer I was left with some sense of hope at its conclusion.
La Ville est Tranquille will provoke thought and debate among viewers and is an outstanding cinematic achievement.





Rating:
Summary: The French Are A Mess
Review: You won't leave a viewing of this film dancing in the streets and praising French Socialism. Robert Guediguian is brutally frank about the French. These people despise Americans. Are you kidding?

We follow French citizens; maybe seven characters from different walks of life go through a week or so of deprivations. The Moslem bartender who abhors violence and racism beds down the teacher married to the womanizing Socialist politician, the do-gooder. You know how that one is going to turn out. Ariane Ascardide with the short hair-do sells her body to get heroin for her prostitute daughter. Now that's motherly love. Ariane's husband is a drunk dabbling in Fascist politics. The taxi cab driver falls for Ariane, but he's so socially retarded, he can only have a relationship with her if he pays for sex. The taxi cab driver's parents think he's in love with a nice girl. A mafia hit man is a friend from the old days with... oh; I can't get into anymore of this plot. It is complicated, but it did hold my interest. You knew something bad was going to happen. France is a mess and the director is skilled and truthful.