Movie Nation

Before he became the French poster boy for “sexual predator,” Gerard Depardieu was the unlikeliest screen sex symbol of his era. Burly to the point of huge, played a soulful “Cyrano” and took on Jean Valjean in a TV version of “Les Miserables,” co-starred in the Hollywood hit “Green Card” and other screen romances.

The film that “made” him was probably Claude Berri’s classic mid-80s folk fable “Jean de Florette.” But the movie that launched him as an international star and romantic lead was “The Return of Martin Guerre,” a 1982 film, a Medieval period piece based on a true story that has fascinated France and Europe, novelists and playwrights ever since it came to light.

If we can separate the art and artist from the creep who made it — something Woody and Polanski’s fans have done for decades — it’s still worth revisiting, a story as beloved as that of Robin Hood and William Tell, but more truth than folklore in this case.

Filmed in the Pyrnees on the Franco-Spanish border, the same region where the true sixteenth century story is set, based on a 1940s novel that imagined what the wife in this story was thinking, Daniel Vigne’s best and most famous film is a gloriously detailed and immersive period piece that lets us believe a woman could be deserted by a disinterested husband and be fooled when he “returns” a more robust, considerate and sexual partner years later.

And if Bertrande (Nathalie Baye) wasn’t actually “fooled,” she gives us hints about why she’d never “tell.”

Via flashbacks, we meet her and the boyish, ungainly Martin (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) on their wedding day, witness the colorful ceremony and the solemn discussion of the dowry she’d bring to the marriage, and have a courtside seat for the consummation ritual, as it was practiced back then.

The marriage is “cursed,” Bertrande remembers, with the village mocking Martin’s inability to do his husbandly duties. Even casting out the “demons” that curse them (Jean-Claude Perrin plays the helpful, in-their-business priest) doesn’t wholly “cure” their love life.

As Martin dislikes farmwork and is mistrusted even by members of his own family, nobody could have been shocked when he disappeared.

Years later, he (Depardieu) returns — just as tall, but no longer stooped, a brawny, outgoing soldier returned from the wars. He knows everybody in the village and a lot about the lives there. He remembers faces, fields, relationships and quirks. Only a few are even the least bit reluctant to embrace him as who he says he is, including Bertrande.

“The bird’s back in the nest,” the villagers of Artigat chant to them (in French with English subtitles). “Tonight they will not rest!”

But this story is being related to a parlimentary magistrate (Roger Planchon), a man of reason and a questioner with an ear for detail and missteps. He’s been summoned because there’s some doubt as to who Martin is. That doubt was raised the moment Martin talked about money. And the doubters are led by his greedy uncle (Maurice Barrier).

Is this all about money, or is Martin who he says he is?

“NEVER was a husband so maligned!” the accused bellows.

This story has been novelized, filmed and even turned into a stage musical and inspired many a TV episode about a “stranger” knowing way too much about this family or that town (Mayberry, for instance). So it’s not as if everybody forgot William Tell shot the apple off his son’s head.

But our three screenwriters — including director Vigne — use the tale as a portal to the rise of compassion, humanism and romantic love, with “law,” harsh as it was, enforced via investigation and “due process.”

Depardieu is in fine bluster, but the movie’s shortcomings only became obvious when Jodie Foster and Richard Gere tackled the material with an American Civil War backdrop in 1993’s “Sommersby.” Depardieu and Baye don’t get across the lust and longing ache that Gere and especially Foster did.

Perhaps the director — whose only other well-known credit, “One Woman or Two” (with Depardieu and Sigourney Weaver) was infamous upon release — wasn’t up to getting this out of the actors.

Perhaps Baye was put off by a co-star whose sexual boorishness and worse with female co-stars went back more decades than French courts and co-star accusations have established.

Depardieu would get a few shots in Hollywood and never make much of a mark beyond “Green Card.” Baye would go on to play the mother of another infamous faker in the Leo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg comic thriller “Catch Me If You Can.”

And their “Martin Guerre” still works, with Medieval settings and costumes legitimizing its depiction of Medieval trial practices and the rule of law even reaching into the farthest corners of France. It has modern mores and values transported backwards through time to find a moment when “identity” and “justice” and “facts” could be debated, even at a local level, thanks to social evolution and pre-Age of Reason means of inquiry.

Our parlimentarian seems geniunely concerned about delivering justice and genuinely curious about what really happened, with or without church concerns about “violating the marriage bed.” Very modern.

Keen-eyed viewers will find very young versions of the great French character actors Dominique Pinon (“Delicatessen”) and Tchéky Karyo (“La Femme Nikita,” “The Way”) in small roles. And film buffs will marvel over a well-made period piece and a star caught on the rise before he became infamous for being on the make, even when such attentions were plainly unwelcome.

Rating: TV-PG, sex, violence

Cast: Gerard Depardieu, Nathalie Baye, Roger Planchon, Maurice Barrier,
Isabelle Sadoyan, Rose Thiéry, Jean-Claude Perrin, Dominique Pinon and Tchéky Karyo

Credits: Directed by Daniel Vigne, scripted by Jean-Claude Carrière, Daniel Vigne and Natalie Zemon Davis, based on a novel by Janet Lewis. A European National release, now owned by Cohen Media Group, streaming on Tubi, et al.

Running time: 1:52