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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with DAN CARRIER
Published: 20 November 2008

Artist (Daniel Auteuil) and gardener (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) get to know each other again in Conversations With My Gardener

Artist and gardener catch up - Pick of the Indies

CONSERVATIONS WITH MY GARDENER
Directed by Jean Becker
Certificate 12

ALWAYS carry a length of string and a pocket knife – you never know when such implements will come in handy.
Such quaint domestic advice is just one of a multitude of homilies that gently seep from the frames of this touching French film about the relationship between a trendy Parisian artist going through a mid-life crisis and the gardener he employs to help lick the grounds of his deceased parents’ country home into shape.
The painter, we discover, is in the middle of a divorce – he found his young models too much of a temptation – and so returns to the rural home he grew up in to start afresh. He advertises for a gardener, and the first applicant happens to be a retired railway worker who he went to school with. Remembering classroom japes, they rekindle a forgotten friendship, and both learn about what has happened to each other in the interim.
At times the class commentary feels condescending, but director Jean Becker is all too aware of this and ensures that both men are given a fair going over.
Drama is added by clouds that loom over the friendship: the gardener falls ill, prompting the painter to reconsider what he finds important in life, and re-evaluate his relationship with his wife and daughter, the artistic circles he moves in and the subjects he paints.
Essentially, this is a love story. The pair find themselves reinvigorated by listening to each other and sharing in each other’s creations. The gardener studies paintings, while the painter marvels at the skill the gardener shows in turning his mother’s overgrown garden into a productive vegetable plot.
Add to this a soundtrack that includes Mozart and the whole experience is incredibly soothing – a little like doing some gardening, or going to an art gallery.

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