France · 2013
1h 42m
Director Daniel Auteuil
Starring Daniel Auteuil, Victoire Bélézy, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Raphaël Personnaz
Genre Drama
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"Fanny" is the second part of the "Marseille trilogy", made by Marcel Pagnol with the generic name of "Marius, Fanny and César". Fanny falls in love and is abandoned by Marius. Now she discovers she is pregnant. Her mother and Marius's father, César, persuade her to accept the romantic advances of a much older man. To save face, Fanny accepts to marry Honoré Panisse, a rich merchant of the Vieux Port, 30 years her senior who will recognize her son.
Auteuil has fashioned hidebound museum pieces that expand the backdrop with sun-dappled glimpses of port activity, while generally resisting any notes of modernity or change of emphasis. What modicum of cosy Sunday-afternoon pleasure they provide stems from the performers.
The New York Times by Ben Kenigsberg
Mr. Auteuil’s passion project is sincere but not successful, honorable but not alive.
Slant Magazine by Clayton Dillard
The characters, the sets, and the scenes all exist to propagate the notion that pleasure derives from repetition and remediation.
Fanny has a stagy sensibility, but Auteuil displays flashes of genuine, old-school craft.
The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer
Fanny is definitely a worthy companion to Marius, although it’s also more claustrophobic in terms of staging, confining the action to a handful of interior sequences that feel less like a movie than like filmed theater, albeit of a rather high order.
Visually, nothing’s changed, with Auteuil still framing his actors (and himself) in purely functional medium shots, occasionally punctuated by postcard-pretty views of Marseilles’ piers. Dramatically, however, Fanny is a bit meatier.
It’s best to sit back and luxuriate in the film’s unhurried pleasures: crisp Mediterranean settings, Alexandre Desplat’s mournful score and a clutch of likeable performances.
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