"My Afternoons With Margueritte" is a sweet, touching, and somehow innocent love story that makes you want to discover the joys of reading all over again. I myself haven't read a book cover to cover in years, due to a visual tracking problem that has plagued me since childhood, but Germain (Gérard Depardieu)'s discovery of books reminds me of how much I enjoyed reading before it became so difficult. It makes me want to get out and read, damn it!. And while I'm at it, it makes me want to go out and meet a friend like Margueritte.
Dyslexic gardener Germain Chazes is considered a simpleton by his so-called friends, and driven to despair by his nasty old bag of a mother (played by Claire Maurier as an old woman and by Anne Le Guernec in the flashbacks). The only joy in his life is derived from his kind, much-younger girlfriend Annette (Sophie Guillemin,) the dubious companionship of his friends, and his hobbies and simple joys.
