Why such a low rating? Too many finer feelings?
Finer feelings do not prevent Frank Capra from making great movies! "Monsieur Le maire" turns "Mr Smith goes to Washington " in its last sequence .
It was based on a true story ,but "freely " adapted by the screenwriters ; it looks more like a fable than a realistic tale ; it would have taken Capra's genius to transcend such a cloying story :the grumpy mayor whose son died some years ago ,who accomodates an unwed mom and her children just to avoid the announced closure of the school .Here ,it takes us back to Jean-Paul Le Chanois ' cinema ,slagged off by the notorious NV whereas his humanism is true in his best works such as "l'école buissonnière" " messieurs Ludovic" "le cas du dr Laurent" ,even more "sans laisser d'adresse" , in which Bernard Blier helped an unwed mom (Danielle Delorme)
Which lays on the table the grave problem of the rural ( here a small village in the mountain) depopulation. A school is the heart of a village; when it closes , it's the beginning of the end .The mayor's would be good deed is actually an obnoxious self-interested motive ,even though he acts for the public good of his citizens : to accomodate a family for some time to bring enough pupils to the school to avoid closure ....and then get rid of them .
But the black mom (Eye Hadara) is not prepared to accept it and it's a tug of war (like in the movie when the mayor bites the dust -or the mud ) ; fortunately there are some politically correct people ,who will show the half-corrupted mayor the straight and narrow.
Clovis Cornillac and Eye Hadara have a tendency to overplay ,but they eventually win their audience over .
Just a pivotal question:why have the mom,a professional chanteuse,sing in English? All the songs she sings are in English ,but we are in france ,ain't we? Fail to use French songs and the French culture will slowly fade away in our seventh art . When pop singer Gauvain Sers sings about the closures of the schools which happen every year in France ,he sings IN FRENCH.
