SFIFF 55: Snows of Kilimanjaro

This is a heartwarming story about good people whose ethical mindsets have calcified in middle age and don't serve them so well when crisis hits.  Set in the port city of Marseilles among shipyard workers and their families, I was expecting something grittier by far, but this gentle drama about salt-of-the-earth types got progressively sweeter until a sort of cynical instinct in me began to reject it.  The film was inspired by Victor Hugo's How Good Are the Poor, which is a sentimental disaster of a poem and not to be read under any circumstances.  I'm not immune to feeling good about good people, and I enjoyed the film's many subtle moments, but it's impact was weakened by its excesses.