Beau Pere

The difference between limited letterboxing and full letterboxing is the difference between seeing and squinting. This fully letterboxed video eats up half of the screen, leaving viewers with the feeling that they're looking through a set of venetian blinds. Which is too bad, because Bertrand Blier's (Get Out Your Handkerchiefs) Beau Pere is a daring drama on an uncomfortable subject. The story follows the progressively more physical relationship that evolves between a 29-year-old stepfather and his 14-year-old stepdaughter after the tragic death of her mother. Although the film contains brief nudity, the focus here is on feelings. Patrick Dewaere is quite convincing as the stepfather who is, at first, appalled by his stepdaughter's advances, but later succumbs ("I'm no hero," he admits). And Ariel Besse walks a perfect line between adolescence and young womanhood. Needless to say, the French take this kind of thing a bit more lightly than do American audiences. For many, the caveat that the material is handled sensitively, will be of little comfort. Libraries with large foreign feature collections may want to purchase this, but the extremely reduced image makes this an unnecessary purchase for others. (R. Pitman)