The Guardians

    The Guardians
    2017

    Synopsis

    In this ensemble drama set in rural France, the women of the Paridier farm are left to run it by themselves while their men are off fighting in World War I. But things become complicated with the arrival of American troops.

    Your Movie Library

    Cast

    • Nathalie BayeHortense Sandrail
    • Laura SmetSolange
    • Iris BryFrancine Riant
    • Cyril DescoursGeorges Sandrail
    • Olivier RabourdinClovis
    • Gilbert BonneauHenri Sandrail
    • Nicolas GiraudConstant Sandrail
    • Mathilde ViseuxMarguerite Sandrail
    • Ophélie-Marion Debiais
    • Xavier MalyEdgar

    Recommendations

    • 90

      Village Voice

      Unassumingly powerful details make The Guardians one of the year’s most affecting love stories.
    • 90

      Los Angeles Times

      The Guardians is an intimate French epic, elegantly made and quietly emotional, a family story filled with characters whose lives we sink into, feeling the hope, the sadness, the sorrow and the joy right along with those on the screen.
    • 90

      Wall Street Journal

      The Guardians, though, is special in a new way. Imagine devoting several years, as Mr. Beauvois did, to making a reflective, bucolic feature that is organized around the themes of community and evolving culture. It’s all too subtle for words, but perfect for moving pictures.
    • 80

      The New York Times

      The Guardians is a historical drama that doesn’t lose itself in decorative period detail, a beautifully photographed chronicle of rural existence that refrains from picturesque sentimentality and grinding misery, the usual modes for this kind of film.
    • 80

      The Hollywood Reporter

      It proves that Beauvois still masters his uniquely classical brand of filmmaking, coaxing strong performances out of veteran Nathalie Baye and newbie Iris Bry, who makes an impressive screen debut.
    • 80

      Screen Daily

      Meditative in its pacing, painterly in composition, quietly devastating in its low-key drama, the latest film from Xavier Beauvois shares some of the slow-burning potency of his acclaimed study of religious faith, Of Gods And Men.
    • 80

      Variety

      Inspired by prize-winning French author Ernest Pérochon’s 1924 novel, director Xavier Beauvois’ emotionally devastating adaptation — which some may find as arduous as the wartime chapter it depicts — dispenses with a fair amount of the suffering to be found in the book, forgoing the contemporary tendency toward gritty, handheld realism in favor of a more timeless, almost painterly aesthetic.
    • 75

      Slant Magazine

      The film captures the pictorial beauty of old-fashioned farm life, but director Xavier Beauvois is careful not to romanticize hard labor for its own sake.