After Antoine Sforza’s (Nicolas Cazalé) estranged father (Daniel Duval) ends up in the hospital knocking on death’s door, the 30-year-old loner allows his loving mother (Jeanne Goupil) to talk him into coming home to the couple’s small country store to help out for the Summer. Joining him is Claire (Clotilde Hesme), a recent divorcee trying to regain control of her life and head to college even though she’s at the latter end of her 20’s herself.

Clotilde Hesme and Nicolas Cazalé in Film Movement's The Grocer's Son

Antoine has a lot of pent-up animosity towards both the store and his parents, and at first taking out the family grocery cart into the rolling Provence hills is enough to make him want to puke. But as the days pass and his secret affections for Claire grow, the angry young man discovers a strength of purpose and a sense direction he hasn’t felt in years. Even when his angry father returns to the fold, the young man’s commitment to completing his summertime task does not waver, everyone’s hardened heart softening as each of them learn to let the past live in the memory and strive for a future none of them can anticipate.

The Grocer’s Son (Le Fils de l’épicier) is the type of quiet, introspective drama that sneaks up on you with such subtle charm and grace you find yourself desperately in love almost without noticing it. A surprise box office sensation in its homeland, this movingly pleasant tale of a man learning to let go of regret and live life to its fullest potential is the type of cinematic surprise I absolutely adore. Even more, it was one I didn’t want to see come to an end, and by the time the credits rolled I almost found myself wishing I could continue riding along inside the grocery cart with Antoine just so I could see what was going happen next.

Not that this was something I thought I’d be feeling based on the opening few minutes. I didn’t like Antoine at all, his whole attitude so insultingly selfish and nihilistic I kind of wanted someone to drop a house on him and put all of us out of our collective misery. He wasn’t relatable, and why his mom kept having so much faith in him or what it was exactly Claire saw in the guy that made him worth trusting was way beyond me.

But then he hits the country road and things slowly, elegantly, effervescently begin to change. Cazalé starts to peal away Antoine’s layers with delicate grace, his interactions with the townsfolk opening doors, not only into his hardened heart, but into the painful family memories keeping it from becoming whole. Before I knew it, not only did I find I was relating to the man I was also starting to fall in almost total love with him, his character arc sweeping me up within its persuasive embrace allowing me grow and evolve right there with him.

Director and co-writer Eric Guirado does a magnificent job guiding viewers along the rolling and meandering emotive highways on which his story travels. He lets things play out with organic precision, never laying on the sentiment or piling on the melodrama allowing for a realistic human travelogue that's utterly captivating. He understands that there is power in silence, that not ever change of direction has to be shouted out with the volume turned all the way up. It’s sublime work, the whole picture having a firmly enthralling lived-in consistency that’s cant help but feel utterly genuine.

I admit, there is little in the way of surprises. I pretty much knew what was going to happen to Antoine the moment he hit the road and yelled at some poor old man about a tin of peas. But just because the end result is familiar doesn’t make getting their any less wondrous, and as human adventures go The Grocer’s Son is one journey of the heart I can’t wait to take again.