'The Marseillaise' about precariousness, old age, and solidarity

As in a popular song, in the cinema of the French director Robert Guédiguian There are notes that repeat themselves. This repetition means that most of his films are hardly surprising, but it also means that his regular audiences find a certain pleasure in recognizing a melody that can be hummed without even realizing it. My dear thief, a short, naturalistically staged story that joyfully refuses to judge its very imperfect characters, functions as both a synthesis of Guédiguian's previous work and a twilight commentary. In it, we find the working-class neighborhood of Estaque in Marseille, where most of the director's filmography was shot. And above all, we find the aged, but still luminous, faces and bodies of the trio of actors who have accompanied him for nearly three decades: Ariane Ascaride, Gérard Meylan, and Jean-Pierre Darroussin. The intriguing narrative anecdote that begins the film (Ascaride plays Maria, a humble caregiver for the elderly who commits petty theft to pay for her grandson's piano lessons) sadly loses its weight when an adulterous romance between two younger characters enters the scene. Despite this unintended detour, it's hard not to be moved by the interactions between the three lead performers, who seem to embody melancholic and mature, if not yet completely defeated, versions of their characters in films like Marius and Jeannette either Marie-Jo and her two loves.