Life Is a Long Quiet River (La vie est un long fleuve tranquille) (1988)

As it turns out, Life Is A Long Quiet River is ironically titled. Also, as a French movie, it is not for family viewing. It begins with a jolting scene that belies the anti-Semitism (against Arabs and Jews) that curdles through the script on occasion. The story moves on to a married doctor's ten-year affair with his head nurse (including two clothed scenes of groping and bouncy-bouncy) before she reveals her greatest acts of perfidy and revenge, each one a bookend to the affair, to the doctor and two families. In response, the richest family in town offers a compromise to what may be the poorest and most dysfunctional family in town in the paternalistic belief that it will be best for all concerned. However, in the wake of such trauma, everything gentrified, modest, and hygienic inevitably unravels in the face of moral entropy. (The movie also contains brief dorsal nudity while bathing and two implied sex scenes outdoors in high grass.) As if to explain why his siblings are devolving to choose chaos over culture, the affected son explains to his mother, "Life is not a long quiet river." The parish priest appears at difficult times and headlines a songfest with catchy gospel tunes. 3.5 stars.