‘Jeannette’ Explores the Human Comedy

The warm embrace of Marcel Pagnol hovers over Robert Guediguian’s irresistible “Marius and Jeannette.” It can’t be an accident that one of the films in Pagnol’s classic Marseilles trilogy of the ‘30s is called “Marius.”

In this contemporary comedie humaine, the setting is also Marseilles, in Estaque, the city’s working-class district, where poverty can still look invitingly picturesque--and where Guediguian and his Marius, Gerard Meylan, grew up together. It’s easy to see why “Marius and Jeannette” was last year’s sleeper at the French box office and why it scored in the Cesars, France’s Oscars, racking up seven nominations and a best actress nod for Ariane Ascaride.

Marius, a tall, handsome man in his 40s, is guarding an Estaque cement factory about to be demolished when he catches Jeannette (Ascaride), a vital woman about his age, stealing two drums of paint. The volatile Jeannette, who says of herself that if she shut up she’d get an ulcer--”and I can’t afford rich people’s diseases”--nonetheless heads home empty-handed. The next day she’s dumbfounded when Marius shows up, the paint in hand, at her tiny apartment.

Jeannette, who has an inner glow that makes her seem beautiful, doesn’t even invite the man in for tea, but Marius’ gesture marks the beginning of an understandably tentative romance.

Jeannette’s life has been hard: The father of her daughter Magali (Laetitia Pesenti), a teenager who wants to become a journalist, walked out on the family, and the father of her little son Malek (Miloud Nacer) was killed when some scaffolding collapsed. A strict but loving mother, voluble about injustices faced by the working classes, Jeannette hasn’t been involved with a man for eight years. Marius, who is as reticent as Jeannette is garrulous, doesn’t talk about his past, but you can see the pain of loss in his sensitive gaze.

Guediguian views the human comedy as affectionately as Pagnol and all the great French directors. It is a question of perspective, of seeing the middle-aged couple within their warm community and in the cycle of life with all its foibles and vicissitudes.

Jeannette’s children and neighbors are just as interesting. They include Monique (Frederique Bonnal) and Dede (Jean-Pierre Darrousin), who have three children; Dede suffers plenty of derision from Monique and his neighbors for once having voted for the far right.

Also prominent are Caroline (Pascale Roberts), a life-affirming survivor who was sent to a German concentration camp at the age of 14 as a member of the Communist youth movement, and Justin (Jacques Boudet), a retired teacher and intellectual with a refreshingly ecumenical view of world religions. These are warm, wonderful people, and their sense of community and their larger, more compassionate view of people are enough to make you envious.

That Guediguian and Meylan were members of a Communist youth movement shows in the film’s leftist but hardly doctrinaire sentiments. Disillusioned with communism, Guediguian discovered film as a way of expressing his idealism and concern for workers. He met Ascaride, his wife, at college, where she was a political activist. Her acting ambitions led to an opportunity for him to try his hand at screenwriting.

“Marius and Jeannette” is his seventh feature since his 1980 filmmaking debut and the first to be distributed in the U.S. This charmer surely won’t be the last.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: The film has adult themes but is suitable for mature older children.

‘Marius and Jeannette’

Ariane Ascaride: Jeannette

Gerard Meylan: Marius

Pascal Roberts: Caroline

Jacques Boudet: Justin

A New Yorker Films presentation of a Agat Films & Cie production in association with La Sept Cinema and with the participation of Canal Plus. Writer-director Robert Guediguian. Producer Gilles Sandoz. Cinematographer Bernard Cavalie. Editor Bernard Sasia. Art director Karim Hamzaoui. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes.

* Exclusively at Landmark’s Fine Arts, 8556 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 652-1330.