This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

There is nothing really wrong with this popular and prestigious French period movie. It's just that there is also not much about it to make you sit up and take notice. It's perfection on a small scale. At the very least, it does a good job of transporting you to a poor French village in the mid-1500s. And it has great performances by esteemed French actors. But if you have, by any chance, seen the US remake first ("Sommersby"), you already know the answer to the is-he-or-isn't-he? question that is at the center of the movie. I believe if you don't know the answer, you might rate this higher. For me, it's a **1/2 out of 4.

In medieval France, some villagers challenge a man (Gerard Depardieu)'s claim of identity when he (as he says) returns home from some time in the army.This is sort of like the story of Odysseus, if the story went horribly awry and another man came home and claimed to be him while the real man was lost at sea. It seems hard to believe anyone could so easily masquerade as another person amongst their family and friends, and yet this is allegedly a true story.American audiences might be more familiar with the Hollywood version. "Sommersby" is a 1993 Hollywood remake of the film in English, transposed to the American Civil War and starring Richard Gere and Jodie Foster. A shame they had to remake it, but at least they cast it well.

This definitive version of the story of Martin Guerre (remade in English with Richard Gere and Jodie Foster as 'Sommersby'; and musicalised in a misguided version by Boublil and Schoenberg) is amongst French actor Gérard Depardieu's greatest roles. As the bluff, romantic, sensitive soldier who returns to the village after years away (or does he?) he manages to provoke all sorts of reactions from his other on-screen characters as well as the film's audience.As Bernadette de Rols, the wife seeking love and companionship, Nathalie Baye is superb; while a large and talented cast give flesh to the remaining characters. I defy anyone to see this adaptation and not be moved by it; try and see in the cinema, where it undoubtedly has more power than on a small screen; and avoid the version dubbed into English. 'Le Retour de Martin Guerre' need to survive with its language and poetry intact.

A man suffering from amnesia coming back from war to be confronted with a wife and child...Well we've seen this before and long ago...To be precise in 1938 ,when Curtis Bernardt -who continued his career in America afterward- directed his "carrefour" starring the excellent Charles Vanel and Jules Berry.Here the director -very academic- substituted the Middle Ages for WW1 and presto!an original screenplay! Actually ,and even the scenarists will never confess it it's "carrefour" remade as "Martin Guerre" remade as "Sommersby" .Best part comes from Nathalie Baye,who portrays a woman who could belong to the Middle Ages as well as to our own era .Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu would have outstripped Depardieu, had the script given him the chance to shine.Since I posted my comments,an user wrote that both "carrefour" and "Martin Guerre" came from an incident from the sixteenth century.Perhaps so ,but in my native France,nobody said a single word about that."Carrefour" was based on a John Kafka novel (not to be mistaken for THE Kafka),and as for "Martin", famous scenarist Carrière -who wrote for Luis Bunuel - and director Vigne took all the credits.Jean Tulard,the most erudite historian of the French cinema does not hint at the American novel of Janet Lewis in his "dictionnaire des films".I must add that in France "MG" is not looked upon as the great film it is in America.It's actually a return to the swashbuckler genre that was thriving in the 1955-1965 years in France,a bit more realist perhaps ,to gain the highbrows audience ,but not necessarily better.The real writer was actually Jean de Coras ,conseiller au parlement de Toulouse,whom you can see in the film (Roger Planchon) and who reported the story.