Let It Rain (Rhoades)

“Let It Rain” Falls Mainly In Provence

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

I’m writing this review as I watch the screener DVD on a rainy day in August. The movie takes place on a rainy day in August too. Its title is “Parlez-moi de la pluie” (Translation: Let’s Talk About the Rain). For American audiences, the title has been shortened to “Let It Rain” and the film has subtitles to help those of us challenged in speaking French.

This comedy about middle-class French life has made its way to the Tropic Cinema.

A collaboration of director Agnès Jaoui and her husband Jean-Pierre Bacri (collectively dubbed “Jabac” by fellow filmmaker Alain Resnais), “Let It Rain” gives us a story about a woman (played by director Agnès Jaoui) who returns to her childhood home in the south of France to help her younger sister (Pascale Arbillot) tidy up affairs after their mother’s death. A filmmaker (played by Jaoui’s real-life husband Bacri) wants to make a TV documentary about her because she’s a celebrated feminist writer. In the French tradition, this task is complicated by the fact that he’s having an affair with her married sister.

This family ensemble is engaging and well played. And true to its title, the story unfolds on a rainy season in August.

Agnès Jaoui got the inspiration for the film while listening to the song “L’orage” by Georges Brassens which opens with the lines “Parlez-moi de la pluie, et non pas du beau temps.”

But it’s not really the rain they are talking about in this intriguing little film.

srhoades@aol.com
[from Solares Hill]