Note on Au Plus Pres du Soleil aka Too Close to Our Son

Au Plus Pres du Soleil aka Too Close to Our Son, written (with others) and directed by Yves Angelo

A different version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at:

-              https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEVa4_CsRStSBBDo4uJWT8BSWtTTn0N1E  and   http://realini.blogspot.ro/

Too Close to Our Son is not in the big league of blockbusters.

And yet I found it interesting.

If horrifying at one point.

The way the story unfolds, it is hard to anticipate the denouement.

Although once mother and son get together on the dance floor it could be foreseen.

And the French films have been here before.

-          What am I saying?

-          We have the ancient Oedipus Rex.

And the famous complex that I reject.

Modern psychology seems to have left Freud and his insistence on infant sexuality, penis envy and obsession with mother behind.

Mathilde Bisson is very good in the role of Juliette Larrain.

A complex character that we see early on in a rather awkward position.

In an open air restaurant, she is calling her married lover.

He is pressured to show that he loves her and the conversation is agitated.

The older man, maybe in his fifties, is finding it next to impossible to cope with this situation.

Indeed, he kills himself.

In spite of this inauspicious debut, I sympathized with Juliette.

True, it is also hindsight and the fact that I know that she pays rather dearly for whatever mistakes and wrongs she had committed.

In fact. The way she saw this relationship is different from the take that relatives of the deceased and one magistrate have on events.

In the interview with the magistrate that handles the case, there is a defense that the poor woman attempts

-          My lover was fading away, he was dead.

-          We think you took advantage

-          I redeemed him

-          His wife thinks differently

-          What could she say?

-          That you took more than two hundred and fifty thousand euros and an apartment from him

-          I told you. I gave him life. He was dead and gone when I met him

The fact that Juliette had worked as a call girl does not help her case.

She is not accused of causing her "amant's" death, for it was a clear case of suicide.

But on the matter of the transfers of money she is accused of foul, illegal play.

The narrative takes a strange turn when a coincidence or the hand of God, depending on how you see it complicates the picture dramatically.

When questioned about her past, the thirty two year old woman is unwilling to share details.

But the magistrate has power and she finds out that Juliette had given birth to a baby when she was only fourteen.

The boy was abandoned and a simple check shows that he is actually...

-          The adopted son of the ...Magistrate herself!

-          What a Coup de Theatre!

Events precipitate.

Because she is jealous and maybe evil, the magistrate sends the natural mother of her son to jail.

Her husband, who is a lawyer, insists that this is illegal, conflict of interest and wrong on other levels.

He even tries to help the poor Juliette with some money, given that she has been jailed and is without means.

Her account has also been blocked, pending the investigation.

The accused is not without blame and she throws herself upon the lawyer.

I will stop here, in the event that someone reads this and wants to see the film and the

Series of Unfortunate Events that quickly unfolds.

The film is very good.