Scar­let – first-look review

There is a Rem­brandt-esque qual­i­ty to the images that Pietro Mar­cel­lo brings to the screen in his lyri­cal saga about a put-upon peas­ant fam­i­ly, adapt­ed from Alexan­der Grin’s fairy tale Russ­ian nov­el. Cov­er­ing a 20-year span between the wars, it stars Raphaël Thiéry, who resem­bles a gal­lic John C Reil­ly with a face so gnarled it is expres­sive even in repose. We meet his char­ac­ter, also named Raphaël, as he limps home from the front­line, slow­ly march­ing over hill and dale, through fields, past ram­bunc­tious chil­dren and farm­ers pitch­fork­ing hay.

The con­trast between Raphaël’s down­ward gaze and the way that Mar­cel­lo frames him as the cen­tre­piece of a beau­ti­ful land­scape reflects the filmmaker’s goal to give his work­ing-class char­ac­ters the artis­tic treat­ment his­tor­i­cal­ly afford­ed to the rich. Trans­posed to rur­al France from Grin’s Russ­ian set­ting, every frame is indeed a paint­ing with crisp light giv­ing a heav­en­ly cast to oth­er­wise dark spaces, while leisure­ly pac­ing means that the eye lingers on each care­ful­ly con­struct­ed visual.

One such visu­al is of a tiny soft hand hold­ing Raphaël’’s large griz­zled paw. No-non­sense matri­arch, Madame Ade­line (Noémie Lvovsky, MVP), pass­es Raphaël his baby, Juli­ette, after his long jour­ney ends at her farm­house door. Baby Juli­ette is a pre­cious con­so­la­tion, for his wife died in a mys­te­ri­ous tragedy while he was at war. Togeth­er with Ade­line, a black­smith and the blacksmith’s wife, the five form a found fam­i­ly, which proves bal­last against the local vil­lagers who exist to both­er, trou­ble and men­ace them.

Mar­cel­lo is sure-hand­ed as he feeds in the telling themes that will ebb and flow as Juli­ette grows into a young woman (played by Juli­ette Jouan). Raphaël, a gift­ed arti­san, pass­es his days pur­su­ing work in the face of var­i­ous ill-turns of fate. Here is a per­spec­tive on fam­i­ly and class that echoes epic stud­ies of human nature, like John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. We see how many aspects of Juliette’s life were set in stone before she was even born.

This is not a mis­ery mem­oir, nor pover­ty porn. The slings and arrows of out­ra­geous for­tune more than meet their match in the warmth that exists in the farm­house, where each of the five­some pos­sess life skills that give their lives a hard-work­ing har­mo­ny. Ele­ments of mag­i­cal real­ism present as Juli­ette seeks refuge in the woods, con­vers­ing with the local ​“witch”. While she is bathing in the lake, singing a dit­ty, she catch­es the atten­tion of pass­ing rake, Jean (Louis Gar­rell with an aris­to­crat­ic lit­tle moustache).

Mar­cel­lo seam­less­ly inserts news­reel footage to give a sense of the world pro­gress­ing beyond this domes­tic micro­cosm. There is great atten­tion to detail as events seed­ed ear­ly on bear fruit lat­er in unex­pect­ed yet fit­ting ways. Scar­let is grave­ly aware of the dan­gers of being female and poor when oppor­tunis­tic men cir­cle. Juliette’s defi­ance (“she’s as proud as a wolf”) and Adaline’s feroc­i­ty are shown to be forged out of necessity.

They are not vic­tims. They are aveng­ing angels. ​“Girls must be 1000 times braver than boys,” sings Juli­ette who is brave enough to laugh at inequal­i­ty. After a tense open­ing 30 min­utes, the pac­ing across the next 70 min­utes is some­times lan­guorous to a fault. Still, the char­ac­ters and images are illus­trat­ed with a fierce and breath­tak­ing beauty.