This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Gently-paced family road trip as divorced parents drive from Brussels to the Alps to collect their son following a skiing accident.  A series of mundane incidents and interactions provide windows into the personalities of the characters - particularly the dreamy, accident-prone mother and the macho, slightly boorish but generally endearing father.  The warm human interactions are contrasted by repeated scenes of empty spaces, snowfields, mountains, lakes, farmland and views of architecture that generally dwarfs the humans moving through it (freeway overpasses, highways snaking up mountainsides, the brutalist architecture of the ski resort).  Like many road trips, nothing really ever happens, but the journey is a pleasant one.

Marion Hansel's Tenderness is an epiphanic episode, quiet, delicate, even tender. A couple 15 years divorced reunite to bring back their ski-instructor son, injured in a skiing accident. As the ex-couple drive to get the son they tease each other over their old differences. But their son's new girlfriend has never seen such different people so obviously still in love. The wife drives her son's van back to their home, so she's removed from her ex though following him. When she picks up a hitchhiker, she's touched by his parting note: "I think you're beautiful."The father has a new wife. The mother has instead learned to enjoy her solitude. A night trip up the mountain makes her love the mountain she used to hate. Their son's girlfriend has ambitions which may leave him behind. In both relationships, though, the affection and tenderness seem secure whatever the changing terms of their connection.While the narrative is largely told in close-ups and tight interiors, the opening isolates the small human figures against vast icy spaces. To that cold cosmos our tenderness is a vital response. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.

EightyProof has already done a great job describing the specialness of this film, but I wanted to add a little more. Tenderness was shown last weekend as part of the annual French Film Festival at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. One of last year's films, The Minister , cemented my fascination for Olivier Gourmet's effortless acting style, so I made sure to see this piece, but little did i know that the real highlight of the film would be the character of as portrayed by the utterly delightful Marilyne Canto. For me, the film was really about HER. Whether that was the director's intention, I don't know, but while i was watching, it was as if I could FEEL the director becoming enamored of this enigmatic and charming Tinker Belle. Throughout the film, she just has this endearing slight smile that guides and protects her through life as she embraces the new and unknown at every turn. Not in any major situations, just in all the little moments of life.After it kept revisiting my consciousness the next day, I said to my husband, "You know, it's a shame; i think Olivier/Franz was the real loser in that divorce. But he clearly never understood her or that it was his loss....." .

From its opening shot tracking two skiers gracefully winding their way down an alpine slope to its gentle, perfect ending, Marion Hansel's lovely gem of a film is a surprisingly affecting portrait of love, both romantic and filial. The above-mentioned opening shot, breathtaking and disarming, is immediately interrupted by the sound of a crash, as we cut in close to discover that one of the figures has fallen. "It's broken for sure," Jack bluntly tells his companion. "Call for help." This simple opening sets in motion a very poignant and tender tale.The young man, it turns out, has been working as a ski instructor in Flaine for the past couple of months. Although his injury occurs in France, he is actually from Belgium, where his separated parents Frans and Lisa still live. Early in the morning, Lisa wakes up to the alarming telephone call informing her that her son is in the hospital. Though the injury does not appear to be too serious, she is naturally concerned, as any parent would be. She relays the news to her ex-husband, and the two decide to make the nine hour drive to Flaine to bring their son home. The odd couple, at once so different yet at the same time magnificently complimentary, set off at 6:30am and have a journey full of nostalgia, regret and more than their fair share of minor catastrophes. We can see exactly why they were once in love and understand instantly that they very well may still be.Finally they reunite with their son, meet his girlfriend Alison, enjoy a couple of meals together, and then pack his things into the car and head back to Brussels. It's as simple as that. No major plot twists, no big, emotional scenes and, best of all, no fanciful or unbelievable happy endings—just a series of everyday conversations between real people, highlighting both their attractive and less-than-savory qualities. Full of wit and humor, the film is almost picaresque in nature, as little vignettes unfold to show new aspects of each relationship: ex- husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, mother and child, father and son. Hansel finds comedy and poignancy in equal measure in the sometimes awkward, sometimes touching situations in which her characters unexpectedly find themselves. The cast members all breathe life and truth into their characters, especially the magnificent Marilyne Canto as Lisa and Olivier Gourmet as Frans. In a small cameo, Spanish actor Sergi Lopez also contributes a memorable performance as a hitch hiker. In the end, it's true, perhaps little has changed in the lives of the characters, but as Bourvil croons the title tune over the closing credits, the lovely, quiet truths of the story resonate to confirm what a special film has just ended. And what a perfect title the author has chosen for her tale.