Marcel Pagnol's The Baker's Wife is about an hour too long and it is peppered with too many scenes that add nothing to the plot. But that was kind of the point of the film: it's a movie about characters more than plot. Oh, there is a story involving a cuckolded baker whose inability to make bread due to his despondency leads to the town rallying as one to return his prodigal wife. But this is merely a framework on which to hang portraits of the village's many colorful characters. There are a squabbling pair of farmers whose animosity springs from a couple of poorly located trees, a bickering leftist and the local priest, a whole host of Arcadian rustics, and, of course, the baker himself played by the immortal Raimu. Honestly, the film reminds me a lot of Howard Hawks' Hatari! (1962), another film about an hour longer than it needed to be that was more concerned with its characters and the insouciant pace of their lives while not on the hunt (for animals and/or unfaithful women) than on a plot. Both films are about the empty moments in-between spurts of action and the magnetic personalities that inhabit them. Here is a film that is as warm, lazy, and inviting as an afternoon in the French countryside.
7/10
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