Maurice Pialat - Le Garçu (1995)

http://img.ozap.com/00793680-photo-affiche-le-garcu.jpg

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/5333/imdbimage.jpg

From Senses of Cinema:
Within an apparently fragmentary and digressive form, Le Garçu is unified by one essential question: what creates our attachments to others? The film centers on the intermixing of ties between people who demonstrate these enigmatic but indestructible attachments, painful, unbearable or irritating as they often are. Gérard, first of all (whom one recognizes as Pialat's alter-ego, giving the film the sense of a subtle self-portrait) appears to struggle with ties of all sorts – loving ties, paternal ties, filial, friendly, sexual, etc. – but doesn't quite know how to situate himself in relation to each one. Thus, after he and Sophie separate, he returns to her, again and again, to the point of intrusion (at one point surprising her with an enormous toy truck he brings in the middle of the night). It's not clear if his motive is to be close to his son, or because he can't stand the idea of Sophie having a new lover, Jeannot (Dominique Rocheteau). As for Sophie, she suffers from the abominable way in which Gérard treats her, but at the same time cultivates regret at not having been loved by him the way Jeannot loves her: with tenderness, being present for her and her son.

The most important words in this film are thus those that Gérard throws at Sophie a moment before her tears in the restaurant: “Your attachment to my father … you love the families of others because you didn't have any grandparents,” he reproaches her, but not without concluding, “Grandparents are important … when you don't have them, you miss them.” Cast in doubt, but nonetheless recognized as a necessity, the affectionate tie that Sophie has woven with Gérard's father – the eponymous Garçu – becomes the symbol of all the infinitely problematic ties that the characters of this film carry, like hidden wounds, and which sometimes come to light.