"The Well Digger's Daughter," despite the title, does not take place in a well, or in the dark, but in the green and golden expanses of rural Provence, circa 1914. It's the first film directed by the actor Daniel Auteuil, as part of a four-film project to remake films by the writer-director Marcel Pagnol, and if the others are this good, this is a project to look forward to.
Pagnol is best known in the United States for writing the stories that were the basis of Claude Berri's 1986 masterpieces, "Jean de Florette" and "Manon of the Spring." "The Well Diggers Daughter," although not quite in that class, is set in that same rural world, and it has the same way of sneaking up on the audience. What to our eyes looks small, placid and idyllic soon reveals itself as a place of grand passion and life-and-death struggle.
"The Well Digger's Daughter" is old-fashioned in the best sense, almost cozy in its conventions. In an early scene, Auteuil, who plays the local well digger, explains to one of his employees how he ended up the widowed father of five daughters and how one of them came to be educated in Paris. It's flat-out exposition - the guy he's talking to would probably know all this already - and yet something about Auteuil's approach feels tried and true, not tried and worn.
The daughter from Paris, Patricia (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), is the well digger's favorite, and, hoping to keep her close to home, he encourages his slightly clownish colleague (Kad Merad) to court her. Meanwhile, Patricia is developing an interest in Jacques (Nicolas Duvauchelle), the elusive son of a wealthy merchant. And from that simple and rather stock situation, events of profound moment start to build.
It's a good director who knows his actors' strengths, and it's an unusually smart actor who knows his own strengths well enough to direct himself. Auteuil has always excelled at playing men who are basically decent and yet flawed and limited. In the well digger, he finds a role that perfectly suits him, a character who is a mysterious amalgam of right and wrong ideas, odd prejudices and tender feelings, and so we watch him with interest at all times, wondering which way he'll eventually tilt.
As Patricia, Berges-Frisbey is the film's warm and sympathetic focus, but Auteuil's appreciation of all the characters, in their fullness and truth, results in something rare: a movie that provokes an anxious and intense rooting interest without providing a single villain.
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