This is reminiscent of Marcel Pagnol's great trilogy Marius, Fanny, Cesar, which was also set in a French port. There are, of course, close to a thousand miles separating Marseilles in the South from Le Havre in the north but both are imbued with a strong sense of community and both address the realities of life and both furnish happy endings. Very little happens here - a group of illegal immigrants are discovered in a container on the docks; one, a young boy, runs away and is befriended by a man who shines shoes for a living; the man's wife develops a terminal illness. A great deal of film time is spent eating, drinking,and talking. The shoeshine man organises a concert to raise money to pay for the boy's illegal passage to England, he visits his wife in hospital. A police Inspector who investigates crime rather than illegal immigrants circles in the background. The boy gets away, the man's wife recovers. It's not unlike lifting a pebble in a rock pool and examining the life going on there. It's a beautiful film, finely acted by an ensemble cast virtually unknown with the exception of the magnificent Jean-Pierre Darroussin as the policeman.
Review of Le Havre
