When Raphaël, a great slab of a man, trudges into the French film “Scarlet,” he carries an unbearable burden. World War I has just ended and, like other combatants, he’s on his way home near-broken. When he arrives, he discovers that his wife has died, leaving him with a baby, Juliette. He mourns his wife but the girl soon becomes his sun and his moon, and in time the lodestar that takes this picturesque tale from one historical era to the next.
“Scarlet” is the story of a father, a daughter and the different realms that surround them like concentric rings: their tiny community, the nearby village that turns from them and, in the distance, the inevitable, rapidly changing world of booming cities, mass production and social revolution. Over the passing years, things happen to our characters, gentle and kind things, but also shaming, rejection and violence. They will persevere, fortified by their humanity, by their rooted sense of place and by the enduring strength of their affections.
Much as he did in “Martin Eden,” his bold adaptation of the Jack London novel, the Italian director Pietro Marcello has again charted an atypical narrative course. “Scarlet” is based on a novel, “Scarlet Sails,” by the Russian writer Alexander Grin (or Green, depending on the translation). Marcello — who wrote the script with three others — has borrowed from Grin’s story while taking it in new directions. Yet, as in the novel, a crucial focus remains the relationship between the father, played by a remarkable Raphaël Thiéry, and the daughter, who over the course of the film is played by four children and by an adult, Juliette Jouan.
“Scarlet” opens on a sober note with what appears to be colorized documentary footage of postwar scenes, striking archival images set to the funereal tolling of bells that soon gives way to the kind of hissing and crackling noises you sometimes hear in old films. Raphaël enters shortly afterward, a lonely uniformed figure limping across a dark, desolate French field. Within seconds, he is heavy-footing his way through a village and down a path sliced into a pretty opening in some woods, his body backlit by the breaking dawn. He looks like he’s making an entrance onto a stage, which suits a character on the precipice of a new adventure.
