"Afternoon with Margaret" is a work directed by the famous French director Jean Baker, released in 2010, this low-budget film that explores "goodness, family affection, and respect for the elderly" has welcomed more than 600,000 viewers in two weeks of release, which is enough to glimpse its charm. The film mainly tells the story of Charlemagne, who suffers from "dyslexia", in an afternoon, meets Margaret, who loves to read, and through the two get along, fully presents the cause of Charman's psychological trauma and the process of being healed.
Shaz Kiman (Gérard Depardieu) is the protagonist of the film. He is over fifty years old, ugly and obese, and has a childhood that is diametrically opposed to the warm tone of the film. The indifference of his mother, the ridicule of his friends, and the ridicule of his teachers filled The whole of Kiman's childhood. Luckily, however, Keyman didn't become a cold and tyrannical person, he had a sweet girlfriend, a small vegetable garden, and a park to spend his lunchtime time. Keyman always had a warm and kind heart and was at ease with this world that was not very friendly to him. One day in his fifties, he met Margaret in the park, counting pigeons and reading novels. Margaret was an old lady in her nineties who lived alone in a nursing home.
At the end of the film, he recalls his encounter with Margaret, saying: "It was not an ordinary encounter, I found her by chance on a park bench. She was inconspicuous, like a little white pigeon, with delicate feathers. She lives in words, circling in ordinary words and sentences like me.
Her gentle voice drifted into Kiman's heart, and he, who did not like to read, was touched by this voice and entered an unspeakable world. God gave everyone a cup of sweet wine and a cup of bitter water, some people first sweet and then bitter, some people first bitter and then sweet, some people robbed other people's sweet wine, and some people drank double the bitter water. Kirman never had sweet wine, only many times bitter water. It wasn't until he was over half a hundred years old that life showed a hint of pity for Kiman. He has a girlfriend who admires him and also meets Margaret, a confidant in the park.
But he did not realize that the books he had read with Margaret these days were quietly changing his life, that he had begun to take time to think in his day-to-day labor, that he had a close friend who was willing to understand and listen to him, that the old man still retained a thirst for knowledge in his twilight years, and that this spirit was infecting him and daring him to enter the next journey of his life, to cherish his family, to embrace the rest of his life.
This is not an ordinary encounter, there are no other adjectives except love and warmth... In the name of the flower, she lives in the text, in the winding adjectives, in the verbs of the warbler, some people just break free, but she wins with weakness, penetrates my body, to my heart. It was not an ordinary encounter, I found her by chance on a bench in the square, she was unremarkable, like a little white pigeon, with her delicate feathers, she lived in words, and like me, she wandered among ordinary words. She gave me a book, then two, and page after page flashed before my eyes.