‘Scarlet’ Review: A Father and Daughter Endure

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In a new film from the director of “Martin Eden,” pastoral interludes of domestic life in the wake of World War I alternate with views of the world beyond.

By Manohla Dargis

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When Raphaël, a great slab of a man, trudges into the French film “Scarlet,” he carries an unbearable burden. World War I has just ended and, like other combatants, he’s on his way home near-broken. When he arrives, he discovers that his wife has died, leaving him with a baby, Juliette. He mourns his wife but the girl soon becomes his sun and his moon, and in time the lodestar that takes this picturesque tale from one historical era to the next.

“Scarlet” is the story of a father, a daughter and the different realms that surround them like concentric rings: their tiny community, the nearby village that turns from them and, in the distance, the inevitable, rapidly changing world of booming cities, mass production and social revolution. Over the passing years, things happen to our characters, gentle and kind things, but also shaming, rejection and violence. They will persevere, fortified by their humanity, by their rooted sense of place and by the enduring strength of their affections.

Much as he did in “Martin Eden,” his bold adaptation of the Jack London novel, the Italian director Pietro Marcello has again charted an atypical narrative course. “Scarlet” is based on a novel, “Scarlet Sails,” by the Russian writer Alexander Grin (or Green, depending on the translation). Marcello — who wrote the script with three others — has borrowed from Grin’s story while taking it in new directions. Yet, as in the novel, a crucial focus remains the relationship between the father, played by a remarkable Raphaël Thiéry, and the daughter, who over the course of the film is played by four children and by an adult, Juliette Jouan.

“Scarlet” opens on a sober note with what appears to be colorized documentary footage of postwar scenes, striking archival images set to the funereal tolling of bells that soon gives way to the kind of hissing and crackling noises you sometimes hear in old films. Raphaël enters shortly afterward, a lonely uniformed figure limping across a dark, desolate French field. Within seconds, he is heavy-footing his way through a village and down a path sliced into a pretty opening in some woods, his body backlit by the breaking dawn. He looks like he’s making an entrance onto a stage, which suits a character on the precipice of a new adventure.

The first half of the movie largely centers on the life that Raphaël makes with Juliette as she grows from a curly-head moppet into a bold young adult who’s at once dreamy and pragmatic. Encouraged by Adeline (a wonderful Noémie Lvovsky), a warm, bosomy matriarch who cared for Juliette after her mother’s death, Raphaël has moved into a cozy stone building, forming a supportive community with this independent-minded woman and a blacksmith’s small family. There, in dappled sunlight and sometimes in shadow, Raphaël raises Juliette, works for a shipbuilder and later earns a paltry living carving toys from wood scrap.

These naturalistic scenes flow beautifully. Marcello regularly shifts between interludes of Raphaël and Juliette’s pastoral life and views of the world beyond. The villagers are somewhat cold and at times unwelcoming — there’s savagery and mystery lurking in the curtains — but Marcello isn’t much concerned with the specifics of this friction. He’s more attuned to gestures, Daumier-like faces, the breeze in the trees, the choreography of bodies and the many textured, outwardly modest details that make up a life. Raphaël finds peace and warmth in this bucolic corner, and Marcello feels equally at ease and at home here, too.

One of the attractions of “Scarlet” is that it doesn’t fit obvious categorization, which means that you’re not always sure where it’s headed or why. The vibe is by turns sober, warm, melancholic and playful to the point of near-silliness. You may laugh and cry, as the movies always promise us, though you may also quizzically scratch your head. There are scenes of communal accord and others of provincial brutality. In one section, a character sings while swimming and drifting like a mermaid only later to read from an anarchist’s poem. At another point, an adventurous stranger (Louis Garrel) swoops in on a plane, sparking romance.

As Marcello shifts tones and moods, he engages with (although at times merely gestures at) different subjects — manual labor, magic, modernity — some of which stick better than others do. Work is an important motif that he returns to repeatedly. The casting of Thiéry, with his physical solidity, his fat-sausage fingers and rough-hewed face — his ponderous brow juts out like a ship’s prow — is crucial in this regard. When he carves a block of wood, I flashed on Martin Scorsese talking about Randolph Scott in Budd Boetticher westerns like “The Tall T,” and how Scott and his weathered face harmonize with the desert setting.

There’s nothing sleek or contemporary about how Thiéry or his character looks and moves; Raphaël is a figure from an earlier time, an earlier film time, too. In moments, he evokes Michel Simon, a favorite of Jean Renoir; Thiéry isn’t the actor Simon was, but he holds your attention completely. Jouan’s grasp is less firm, but she’s charming. More important, she makes you believe both in Juliette’s bond with her father and in her character’s future, with its buzzing airplanes, bustling stores, its coming war and, just maybe, resistance. Juliette’s life will be very different from Raphaël’s and perhaps even more cruel, but it’s one that she will face sheltered by the tenderness of his love and by that of the world he helped make.

ScarletNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters.

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Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic of The Times, which she joined in 2004. She has an M.A. in cinema studies from New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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