Four movies first. Respectively in German, English, Spanish, and French, and featuring a child losing a parent, a child walking out on a parent (there are two of these), and a child dying prematurely, they all in their different ways examine what parenting means.

1.
Mostly Martha
2001, Sandra Nettelbeck

Not a great title. The original is Bella Martha, and given the Italian connection, they'd have done better to stick with it. Even anglophones know what "bella" means... Career-driven chef Martha is a driven but zany and engaging character, who has to radically adjust her life to accommodate the niece who has just lost her mother, and the rival chef (Italian) who appears in her kitchen.

Moral: Even food isn't everything (although it represents and achieves an awful lot...)



2.
Sometimes Always Never
2018, Carl Hunter

Very British. A little weird in its quirky stylization. Bill Nighy is good, as always, as the father whose life has been hijacked by the disappearance of one of his sons.

Moral: Don't focus so much on what you've lost that you lose sight of what you have...



3.
Julieta
2016, Pedro Almodovar

This gets good reviews (it scores 83% on the Tomatometer, and Roger Ebert, a site that usually does pretty astute reviews, describes it as a film of "quietly assured mastery"). And certainly, it's very beautifully shot. I was a little underwhelmed, though (my bad, no doubt). Again, it's about a young person who walks out, leaving her mother, Julieta (who has already lost her husband, in circumstances she blames herself for), to pick up the pieces of her life. When there is a sign of life from the daughter, Julieta stakes everything on the hope that there can be reconciliation.

Moral: So much pain would be avoided if people would only TALK to each other... (Interestingly, the movie's first proposed title was "Silence"...)





4.
The House by the Sea
2017, Robert Guediguian

This was my favourite of this suite of four. And this time the English title seems better than the original ("The Villa" is surely somewhat blanc). Angele's life, and her relationship with her family, have been scarred by the accidental death of her little girl, some 20 years ago. But this is just one of a collection of regrets and hurts that mark the little community, who are variously dealing with illness, dependence, and changing social and political circumstances. Time is a bastard really... Its passing leaves none of us unscathed, and many different kinds of deaths are portrayed in this movie. But there are bright spots. The theatre-loving fisherman. The flashback to happier, less burdened times (actually taken from another of Guediguian's movies, which featured the same actors...) And, paradoxically, the three asylum-seeker children who wander into the life of the cove-dwellers bring the family together -- at least for a little while... By the end, you feel that the life of everyone (everyone who remains alive, that is) has changed just a tiny bit for the better.

Then there's that Mediterranean setting, of course... The cove, the sea, the boats, the cliffs, the balcony, the viaduct, the trains... Sigh...



Krimis next.

Offspring, more specifically, sons, are the plot drivers of the two we watched recently. In the first, a young man is killed in order to wreak vengeance on his father; in the second, a young boy is murdered when a relationship spirals out of control.

The first (you might have guessed already) is The Tunnel, the French/British cousin of The Bridge, which was a Swedish/Danish collaboration. I preferred The Bridge, maybe because it was the first version I watched. The lead characters somehow seemed more sympathetic; a tunnel can never be as photogenic as a bridge; and -- a major irritant -- surely any British officer in Karl's position would have to SPEAK FRENCH???!



The second was Broadchurch, which I thought was excellent. At the end of the day, I prefer this more classical kind of crime drama -- focusing on solving the crime and teasing out its social repercussions -- to the more lurid and sensational turn that some Scandi drama has taken (The Bridge, Midnight Sun...).

And Dorset (another of our many former homes) looked beautiful.