And Marius met Jeannette.

Robert Guédiguian was a marginal filmmaker. In 1997, he suddenly turned mainstream : his movie, « Marius et Jeannette » was a success.

Marius lives in a deserted cement factory and watches over its open-air emptiness. He has long, greasy hair and a wardrobe of red and blue overalls.

Jeannette has two kids and no man. She works as a cashier, her pay is « maigre » -meagre-, she is bony.

Marius and Jeannette are both forty something, they live in L’Estaque, a Marseilles working class neighbourhood. Life is hard.

Marius meets Jeannette. Life is still hard, but beautiful too, the film is not. Our heart should bleed, only gets bored by sitcom material.

As Marius, Gérard Meylan is not bad. As Jeannette, Ariane Ascaride, Guédiguian’s life companion, is quickly annoying. She screams and overacts like a bad Anna Magnani’s body double. Her Southern accent is genuine, though.

In the supporting cast, Jean-Pierre Darroussin is great. He cannot help it, he has talent ; thanks to his support, his screen partners look worse.

Film is so « clichés »-ridden that, had it been directed by a Parisian filmmaker, the whole of Marseilles would have rioted and called a « fatwa » to lynch him.

Only one cliché is missing ; too bad, it would have been welcome : the film is not bathed in gorgeous, soothing Mediterranean light, but displays ugly, washed out colours ; a constant smog hangs over the film, either a film processing problem or the legacy of Marius’s cement factory.

« Marius et Jeannette » is a long -102 minutes- promo-reel of left wing « bobo » -Bohemian bourgeois- ideology : how great are the « petites gens » -the humble people-, especially in Marseilles.

Even more in L’Estaque : the neighbourhood became fashionable, « bobos » rushed in to buy and renovate its small houses ; real estate agents loved the film.

Film serves thick slices of uninteresting lives, interspersed with stale wisdom about religion and politics. As an added bonus, spectators are given the recipe for true Marseilles-style « aïoli » ; considering its source, recipe should be taken with a bit of salt and tested with great care.

Upon its release, French critics marvelled at the film freshness and moving sincerity, the unbending dignity of its characters in the face of hardship, the amazing talent of its mostly unknown cast.

It was clearly one from the heart, organic filmmaking, a wonderful break from industrially packaged multiplex fare.

The public apparently agreed. At least to the point of paying for the right to their own opinion.
Why such raving unanimity ?

A « Paris, Texas » style misunderstanding, as the crowds cannot resist cheap love stories dressed in intellectual or radical garments ?

A tribute to Robert Guédiguian’s persistence and resilience, as if his years of obscure toiling, if not his talent, entitled him to one success, like patiently accumulated air mileage to a round-trip to Venice, possibly during the film festival ?

Fortunate timing, as Marseilles was recovering from its dreadful reputation -a crumbling city with a booming crime rate- and coming back in vogue, the film itself part of the city promotional effort to revive its fortunes ?

A Pavlovian reflex to the film title as, sixty-five years after the first instalment in the Pagnol trilogy, Marius seemed to promise another made in Marseilles classic and Jeannette an improvement over Orane Demazis’s dreary Fanny ?

Lightning did not strike twice. Guédiguian’s subsequent movies were met with the same public indifference which had greeted his former ones : « Marius and Jeannette » spectators had perhaps made their own opinion and decided that, as they had the « aïoli » recipe, they could do without Guédiguian « bouillabaisse » for a while.

It did not matter. Thanks to his one success, the director had entered the intimate circle of French pre-approved directors. Subsidies and unquestioning financing flowed freely for his projects.

In 2005, Robert Guédiguian completed his rise to institutional insignificance : he shot « Le promeneur du Champ de Mars » ; the film was the screen adaptation of François Miterrand’s final days gossip with sycophant journalist Georges-Marc Benhamou.

Like every true « Marseillais », Guédiguian fulfilled his life-long dream of making it in despised Paris.