Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 10, 1993 TAG: 9304100052
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SAGA IS TREAT FOR EYES AND EARS
Gerard Depardieu looks like a sorrowful lion in the beginning of "Tous les Matins du Monde."He plays Marin Marais, an esteemed musician in the court of Louis XIV. Marais is listening to his students offer shrill bits of musical theory. Overwhelmed by the cacophony, he interrupts with leonine authority. They just don't get it, and Marais intends to set them straight with a long, sad tale that has everyone in tears at its end.
Translated as "All the Mornings of the World," the film is a visual and auditory treat, a saga that involves the essence of love and art.
Director Alain Corneau tells it with powerful simplicity, imbuing it with a story-book quality befitting a fairy tale.
Guillaume Depardieu, Gerard's son, plays the young Marais. At 17, his voice has changed, and he is excluded from the court choir. Marais has been spoiled and doesn't want to return to the life of a shoemaker's son. He decides to take up the viol.
Having learned all that he can from the court teachers, he's sent to the legendary Sainte Colombe. The master is a widower and father of two girls still grieving years after the death of his wife. He doesn't seek solace in his music, he seeks to sustain his deep sorrow. He recognizes that Marais has skill but no soul, and he's a pretty good judge of character.
Sainte Colombe, played with a commanding gravity by Jean-Pierre Marielle, scorns wealth and status, the very things Marais covets. Still, he recognized yearning in the boy's voice and agrees to teach him. But after Marais returns to court for a performance, Sainte Colombe banishes him.
By now the boy and Madeleine, the oldest daughter, are lovers. Played by Anne Brochet, Madeleine has a porcelain delicacy that barely hides the kind of emotional intensity that drives her father. Madeleine has both her father's talent and his passion, and she agrees to teach Marais. Unfortunately, she's not as astute a judge of character as her father.
The story, adapted from the Pascal Quignard novel by Corneau and Quignard, was inspired by two real musicians, but the melodrama belongs to the screen writers not history.
Its conflicts are classically constructed, and its redemptive spirit seems obligatory but isn't entirely predictable. The visual composition of the movie is as carefully balanced as the story, and 17th-century viol music flows through it like a haunted river.
\ Tous les Matins du Monde: ***1/2 An Octover film at the Grandin Theatre. Unrated. It contains nudity, strong language and sexual content. Unrated; 114 minutes.