WHAT

WHAT'S LIFE (C'EST QUOI LA VIE?) (1999) **1/2

Reviewed 3/17/00

Son Nicholas (Eric Caravaca) has come of age and wants to leave the beleaguered farming life to pursue something, anything else. But tragedy strikes his father, and Nicholas finds himself in the desperate position of keeping up his family's livelihood. He faces being broke and broken-down tractors as well as a grandfather going senile. In the meantime, he falls in love with an older woman, a former opera singer (Isabelle Renauld) whom he doesn't know if he will ever see again. Son of farmers, director François Dupeyron has fashioned an all-too solemn film that never quite comes to life with the exception of Tetsuo Nagata's literally and figuratively golden cinematography. This is hands down, the most beautifully shot film of the year with a big thank you to the French landscape; that and Nagata just has a way with shooting trees. What's Life is so heavy-handed however that whenever the characters have a serious conversation, the film might as well flash supertitles saying, "Serious Conversation". Actor Caravaca has a little of Jean-Paul Belmondo in him without the intensity while Renauld should be played by Julianna Margulies were there ever to be an American version.