What can be discussed freely are the extraordinary performances that Berri coaxed from a cast that could not be bettered.

The edenic landscapes provide an ironic contrast for the heavy use of Biblical imagery and the xenophobic and greedy villagers’ religious superstitions that highlight their sanctimony.

Jean de Florette doesn’t have the motor of a work conceived as a film. It’s a copy, with no life of its own.

Based on Marcel Pagnol’s 1962 two-part novel L’Eau des collines, Berri’s films are a gorgeous meditation on rural life, cruelty, fate, revenge and redemption.