Garden of equals

IF YOU were feeling mean- spirited, you might dismiss the latest film from Jean Becker, a veteran of many genres, as an archetypal example of bourgeois French film-making. After all, the picture does star nice old Daniel Auteuil and - as the title suggests - it does feature a great many chats in pretty, sunlit gardens.

As it happens, Conversations with My Gardener works rather well. Bolstered by sensitive intertwining performances from Auteuil and Jean-Pierre Darroussin, the film makes astute points about the liberation that comes with middle-age as it details an unlikely friendship between two complementary personalities.

Auteuil plays a celebrated painter coping badly with a morass of personal problems: his wife wants a divorce, his mistress has become bored, his paintings are not what they were. Throwing his hands in the air, he retires to his country cottage and sets about establishing a calm hermitage.

His first task is to restore order in the vegetable patch and, when he advertises for a gardener, the first applicant turns out to be an old school chum (Darroussin). At first Auteuil is embarrassed by the difference in their social statuses, but, encouraged by Darroussin's calm, uncomplicated approach to life, he soon learns to take his employee as he finds him.

Over the first half of the film - virtually a two-hander - the two men build on their interrupted friendship and develop an original shared philosophy. Events then intervene and the film takes a darker turn.

One can't deny that the script is overly neat, sentimental and cosy. (The subplot involving a big fish that the gardener has hitherto failed to hook is particularly cheesy.) Indeed, it's not hard to imagine a horrendous US remake starring Robin Williams and someone just as drippy. But the two Frenchman have a shared integrity that restrains the film from drifting too far into bathos, and the easy pacing of the piece allows the viewer welcome room to think.

It's nice to know that such films still exist.

Directed by Julian Becker. Starring Daniel Auteuil, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Fanny Cottencon, Alexia Barlier, Hiam Abbass. Club, IFI, Dublin, 110min ***