An historical imagining about the relationship between the French baroque composer and viol virtuoso Marin Marais -- worldly, ambitious, fame-seeking -- and his teacher M. de Sainte Colombe -- reclusive, ascetic, incorruptible. This is no Amadeus, however; both men are toweringly talented; they just take their talents in different directions, before reconverging for a fascinating and suspenseful colloquy on the Meaning of Music. The story is told as a classroom lecture by the aged Marais -- a clumsy enough premise in the first place, but especially so when he imparts information he could not possibly possess. And dividing the Marais role between Gerard Depardieu and his son Guillaume is clumsy too: the younger Depardieu looks more like Julian Sands than like Depardieu the elder. But the world of the past is conjured up with a vivid and tangible physicality: a pair of shoes, a plate of cookies, a wine bottle, the musical instruments, the piece of wood from which an instrument will be fashioned -- all enwrapped in a painterly light. Within this context, the appearances of Sainte Colombe's dead wife are not out of place; are instead logical and emotional culminations. With Jean-Pierre Marielle and Anne Brochet; directed by Alain Corneau. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd
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