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A lush, emotionally charged revenge drama with pastoral beauty, moral complexity, and a devastating payoff. It works best as the second half of a two-part story, but it also stands on its own as a moving portrait of grief, justice, and the cost of withholding the truth.
Where to watch: Buy
Wed · 1h 55m
Director: Claude Berri
Starring: Yves Montand, Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Béart
In this, the sequel to Jean de Florette, Manon has grown into a beautiful young shepherdess living in the idyllic Provencal countryside. She plots vengeance on the men who greedily conspired to acquire her father's land years earlier.
Claude Berri
Yves Montand, Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Béart
A lush, emotionally charged revenge drama with pastoral beauty, moral complexity, and a devastating payoff. It works best as the second half of a two-part story, but it also stands on its own as a moving portrait of grief, justice, and the cost of withholding the truth.
Manon of the Spring is the rare sequel that deepens everything around it. Claude Berri returns to the same Provençal landscape, but the mood has shifted from fatalistic tragedy to a story of reckoning, where the beauty of the countryside only makes the old cruelty feel sharper.
Emmanuelle Béart gives the film its pulse as Manon, a figure of innocence hardened into purpose. Her revenge is satisfying, but the film is smart enough to let that satisfaction curdle into sadness, because the damage spreads beyond the original guilty men. That moral complexity is what gives the film its lasting force.
The ending lands with real emotional weight, and the film’s patient pace pays off in a way that feels both classical and devastating. It is best watched as the conclusion to Jean de Florette, but even on its own it remains a rich, elegant drama about land, memory, and the price of silence.
sara joy ✿🧚♀️ · 326 likes
nothing will ever compare to my entire french class gasping in horror while ugolin fucking sewed her ribbon to his nipple
David Sims (4★) · 147 likes
fuck them up manon
munta (5★) · 146 likes
emmanuelle béart. That's the review
gregs1999 (4★) · 131 likes
This must have been the quickest 2 hours I have ever felt, I was expecting another hour when there was only 10 minutes left. Those final minutes dropped one of the biggest bombshells in cinema history. It fucking destroyed me. An amazing two-parter that has to be experienced.
Josh Gillam (4.5★) · 99 likes
MILD SPOILERS This follow-up to Jean de Florette caps off the story elements left hanging before, tying it all together in a heart-wrenching, elegiac conclusion that both expands and adds on to the original along with the characters who inhabit it, the actions of Manon (Emmanuelle Béart) causing ripple effects on wealthy landowner César (Yves Montand) and nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil). Director Claude Berri uses… more
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French cinema, period drama, revenge drama, rural melodrama, Provence, moral ambiguity, elegiac, pastoral, 1980s, literary adaptation