Claude Berri’s ‘Hunting and Gathering’ is a lovely French film starring Audrey Tautou. ‘Hunting and Gathering’ was about all sort of things but it was mainly a love story and a story about people finding themselves.
The pleasure of ‘Hunting and Gathering’ was because of four very strong main characters.
There’s Phillbert, played by Laurent Stocker, a young aristocrat minding a beautiful flat for his relatives. He is a beautiful man who is a very caring soul. His life changes when he befriends a beautiful young woman who lives in one of the block’s apartments. Camille, played by Audrey Tautou, becomes ill with a serious bout of influenza, and he moves her to his apartment so that he can tend her till she is well again.
The affection and the tenderness that Camille shows Phillbert brings Phillbert out of his shell and Phillbert decides that he wants to become a more extroverted, confident person, and decides to take up actiug lessons. This results in one of the saddest scenes in the film when Phillbert is centre-stage, and some of the young people in the audience are laughing at him! Any way, at least Phillbert does at least get rid of his stutter!
Camille was an interesting character…A waif like, tiny woman, she worked as an office cleaner. She was pretty tough and protective. Her one big character trait was that was an artist, she loved to sketch people. Whenever she was comfortable with someone new she would sketch them!
Now on to Franck played by Guillaume Canet…Here was an interesting character, one that gave the actor plenty of room to play…there were two main sides to him…there was this deeply caring young man who spent every Monday visiting his grandmother in a nursing home. Then there is the side him that is a bit of a playboy, and likes a bit of rough trade with the women. His job is as a chef, a stressful, full-on job.
Franck’s grandmother was Paulette, played by Francoise Bertin. This was a pretty straight-forward role. The ailing, loving grandmother, knowing her best days are behind her, and wanting to have quality twilight time.