Pascal Aubier – Le Fils de Gascogne AKA The Son of Gascogne (1995)

The Son of Gascogne (1995)
October 9, 1995
FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW;Maybe He’s The Son Of a Film Legend
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: October 9, 1995

There really isn’t much difference between a favorite screen image and a personal memory of youthful passion, except that one exists on film and the other only in our private mental movies. That insight lies at the heart of Pascal Aubier’s delicious comic bouillabaisse of a film, “The Son of Gascogne.” The film, which the New York Film Festival is showing tonight at 9 and tomorrow night at 6 at Alice Tully Hall, is a fable about an innocent young man who inherits a mystique that has everything to do with old movies and old loves and our eagerness to confuse the two.

One evening in a Paris bar, Harvey (Gregoire Colin), a waifish tour guide for a group of folk singers from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, is picked out of the crowd by a boisterous stranger named Marco (Jean-Claude Dreyfus). An overbearing, ruddy-faced chauffeur, Marco informs the young man that he bears such an astonishing resemblance to Gascogne, a legendary 1960’s film maker and New Wave pioneer who died in a car crash, that he must be Gascogne’s son.

Marco claims to have known the director from the time he himself played a small part in a Gascogne film that has become a cult classic. All over Paris, he says, there are friends and colleagues of Gascogne’s who would be delighted to know that the director had a son, and he insists on making the introductions.

As it happens, Harvey grew up fatherless in Le Havre. His mother has always refused to discuss the circumstances of his paternity. Could it be?

Reluctantly, Harvey allows Marco to arrange introductions to assorted luminaries of the French cinema, who appear as themselves. They include Stephane Audran, Jean-Claude Brialy, Claude Chabrol, Bulle Ogier and Marina Vlady, among many others. Harvey finds himself instantly welcomed as a member of their extended family, and he becomes a nostalgic lodestone. As they pour out their personal anecdotes about Gascogne, their faces take on a youthful glow, and Harvey begins to see himself in his father’s image. So potent is Gascogne’s mystique that Harvey suddenly finds himself pursued by beautiful women eager to make love to a legend, even if the encounter has to be secondhand.

In the collective memories of Gascogne, the dead film maker emerges as the soul and essence of the French New Wave, with a legend that outstrips Truffaut and Godard together. A tireless womanizer who apparently had an affair with every woman who crossed his path, he also emerges as a borderline sociopath, a liar and practical joker who liked to assume false identities.

As if this weren’t enough, the ingeniously plotted film weaves in subplots of intrigue and romance. Gascogne supposedly died while working on an epic film that disappeared, although some claim to have viewed the rushes. The existence of a son opens up the possibility that the lost movie may somehow be retrieved. Marco, sniffing opportunity, turns out to be far less reputable than he first appeared.

At the same time that Harvey is embraced by Paris’s smart set, he is falling in love with Dinara (Dinara Droukarova), his Eastern-bloc counterpart on the tour. Dinara just happens to be a film student obsessed with “Breathless.” As she and Harvey deliriously skip down the streets of Paris, the movie intercuts their frolics with shots of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. At moments like this, the film, which is Mr. Aubier’s third feature (his first since 1976), becomes almost too giddy for its own good.

But it is easy to forgive the small excesses and occasional loose ends. Like the 60’s films to which it pays such sentimental homage, “The Son of Gascogne” surges with a passion for movies and for the tempestuous, fantasy-ridden life surrounding their making. As a robust but sophisticated valentine to the French cinema, it is nearly the equal of Truffaut’s classic “Day for Night.”

The.Son.of.Gascogne.1995.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 44mn
Size:	1.61 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	698x390 ~> 698x438
Aspect ratio:	1.590
Frame rate:	23.976 fps
Bit rate:	1 973 Kbps
Audio
French 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/3FB5D2885FE455D/The.Son.of.Gascogne.1995.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English hard