The scarlet sails, a poetic and dreamy tale with Louis Garrel not to be missed

Dreams have no expiration date and the new film with Louis Garrel confirms it. Juliette cultivates many, since she was a child. You indeed you mix them to popular beliefs, prophecies and readings of the future. The protagonist of The scarlet sailsfrom January 12 in theaters after participation in the Cannes Film Festivalcarries with it a baggage of hopes and desires that draw from not exactly scientific sources and this has always made it a target.

She lost her mother as a baby and all the women who populated her childhood have tried to compensate for that emptiness with various forms of magic, but reality always takes the bill and in the small village of France where she lives, between the first and second world wars, she becomes soon almost an outcast.

The soldier father Raphaël returns from the conflict a bit broken, but does everything to surround her with stimuli: he is a skilled craftsman with wood but he also plays the accordion and, despite not knowing how to express feelings in words, he manages to compensate by providing a stable and affectionate, albeit modest, environment.

The movie, freely based on the Russian novel of the same name Aleksandr Grinis staged with rare poetry by the director Pietro Marcello who stages almost a love letter to simple and pure everyday life, a return to the roots and to the creative force of man, before the industrial age.

In the adult version, the protagonist has the face of Juliette Jouan, while the father is played by Raphaël Thiéry. Their paths intertwine with those of a cheeky adventurer, Jean (Louis Garrel)which upsets the girl’s peaceful existence by giving life to her fantasies.

Here then is that this family drama turns to romanticism, passion, self-discovery through the reflection in the other, in a bucolic, wild and uncontaminated environment.

Here time slows down, the sounds of nature envelop everything and values ​​are still those of gentlemen. However, there is corruption the contamination of Evilembodied by some disturbing elements in the community who want to snatch Juliette from her hardworking and serene microcosm, but remain on the sidelines of history.

The title refers to the story that a sorceress tells little Juliette next to the river. The woman (Yolande Moreau), another outsider kept away by the inhabitants of the village because she is pointed out as a witch, tells her that one day some scarlet sails capable of bringing mystery but also pleasant news will arrive from the sea. Fascinated by her words, she waits and believes in them not because she wants to leave or dreams of a future elsewhere, but because the idea of ​​what lies beyond the horizon somehow fascinates and attracts her.

The poignant melancholy of the gaze of the director doesn’t focus so much on conflicts as on the desire to show a placid existence, full of dignity and work ethic, in search of a balance with a world that instead runs after change and the next novelty to devour. A jewel from the past, to be savored slowly.

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