My Afternoons with Margueritte (La tête en friche - 2010)

Good fun! Mary, Bob, and I liked a lot this sweet tale of a barely literate man, teased and verbally abused his whole life, and his elderly friend who reads aloud to him from Camus and introduces him to the world of books. Starring Gérard Depardieu (last covered in Potiche) and 97-year-old Gisèle Casadesus and directed by Jean Becker, who, along with Jean-Loup Dabadie, adapted the novel by Marie-Sabine Roger (they are all experienced at their crafts, but new to me). The book won the Cezam Prix Litteraire Inter CE, one of the largest adjudicated readers' prizes in the world, in 1997 for Roger. And because I speak a little French and am interested, I looked up the meaning of the real title of the book and movie, La tête en friche. It means literally "the uncultivated [or fallow] head," which certainly does describe Depardieu's character Germain.

It closed here weeks ago, so save it to your netflix queue. Here is the trailer and a little of the music.