DVDebut: Denis Dercourt's low-key but lovely and moving comeback tale, IN HARMONY

A dozen years ago French actors Cécile De France and Albert Dupontel delighted international audiences with their special chemistry and charm in Danièle Thompson's wonderful ensemble piece, Avenue Montaigne. How very nice to see these two fine actors together again in the leading roles of Denis Dercourt's 2015 film (just now getting a U.S. DVD release), IN HARMONY (En équilibre). This is one of those quiet, low-key movies about us humans that the French do so very well.

As directed and with a screenplay adapted (from the memoir of his career by stuntman/equestrian Bernard Sachse and Véronique Pellerin) by M. Dercourt (shown at right), the movie unfolds with an easy, graceful flow that never pounds home any point or moral, even as it keeps us wondering exactly where it might be going.

The same year that Avenue Montaigne appeared, M: Dercourt gave us a splendid and low-key psychological thriller about career and revenge entitled The Page Turner. That film, as does this one, also kept us guessing about outcome and motive -- though in a completely different genre.

After equestrian/stuntman Marc Guermont (played by Dupontel, above and below) is involved in an accident on a movie set, he is left in a wheelchair, with his stuntman career suddenly cut short. (Names have been changed here, either to protect certain reputations or to better make this a fictionalized account)

A visit from the woman from the insurance company (Ms De France, below) that represents the movie studio sets in motion a tale that encompasses everything from accepting responsibility to past and future career choices to making the best of a not-so-hot situation.

How the filmmaker weaves all this together -- loosely but lovingly, without pushing any moment or any moral too hard -- turns the film into a particularly quiet and thoughtful meditation on how our lives and careers, from generation to generation, find their way to fulfillment. It is also an odd kind of love story -- consummated only briefly and then left as memory.

The love of horses is deeply felt here, and those who feel the same should embrace the movie thoroughly. Ms De France has a lovely scene in which her character mounts a horse for the first time, and the actress is, as always, spot-on from moment to moment.

Dupontel, as ever the consummate man's man, brings his whole arsenal of feelings to the fore, even as music and piano playing enter the picture and help bring the movie's themes to fruition.

This is not a great film by any means, but it is a good, solid one -- providing 87 minutes well spent. From Distrib Films US with its DVD arriving via Icarus Films Home Video, In Harmony hits the street today, Tuesday, July 10 -- for purchase or rental.

Cindy Meehl's BUCK: an extraordinary movie about an extraordinary man

Such a quiet, unobtrusive movie is BUCK -- the new documentary from Cindy Meehl about an unforgettable man named Buck Brannaman -- that the film pretty much sneaks up on you. Only 88 minutes long, it's gone before you quite know what hit you. Like the recent Bill Cunningham documentary, Buck sports the kind of filmmaking that would rather show than tell. Whenever the director, below, has a chance to go for the kill, nail her subject to the wall and get all the deep, dark information we might crave, she goes no farther and instead lets us fit together what we have already seen, heard and can legitimately ascertain.

Buck Brannaman is a fellow who trains horses -- like you've never seen them trained, and with results better than, well, anywhere else on earth, I suspect. Buck manages this by, in a sense, training the horse owner as much as the animal itself -though he is very, very good with that, too. The footage of the horse training is, I think, as exciting as anything in any other movie I've seen this year (or last): suspenseful, moving, awe-inspiring.  There is one long section that involves a golden horse (I don't know horses; is this a Palomino, perhaps?) that is as intense and shocking as a kick in the groin (or, in this case, a bite in the head).

As a child Buck was raised in an abusive home, a fact that we see and hear about and that clearly has helped form his adulthood. And yet this is hardly a simple explanation for anything we see. The man has learned from his experience and clearly hopes to make his own children's life much different. But neither the film nor its subject ever preaches. Buck sets an example and leaves it at that. And Ms Meehl is content to follow suit.

Buck would make a good psychologist. Hell, he already is. "Your horses's behavior," he explains to one woman, "tells me quite a lot about you." Later after all that transpires, she repeats this line, and breaks down in tears. There is a mystery at the heart of Buck, the man, and Buck the movie, and it is one that you will probably be content to roll around in your own mind without demanding an answer. In any case, I believe you would have to be the man in question to fully understand. In a year of fine documentaries that just get better and better, Buck is a standard-bearer of sorts.

The film, from Sundance Selects, opens this Friday, June 17, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and the IFC Center.

Look for it on VOD and DVD eventually, as is the case with most Sundance Selects films. For now, though, the theater is the only place you can meet Buck.