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Poster for Toni

Toni

1935 · 1h 24m · N/A Drama
Directed by Jean Renoir

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Overview

In the 1920s, the Provence is a magnet for immigrants seeking work in the quarries or in the agriculture. Many mingle with locals and settle down permanently - like Toni, an Italian who has moved in with Marie, a Frenchwoman. Even a well-ordered existence is not immune from boredom, friendship, love, or enmity, and Toni gets entangled in a web of increasingly passionate relationships. For there is his best pal Fernand, but also Albert, his overbearing foreman; there is Sebastian, a steady Spanish peasant, but also Gabi, his young rogue relative; there is Marie, but there is also Josefa.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
100%
Tomatometer
Fresh

It has a curious, muted, infinitely poetic way of treating human passion.

Renata Adler, New York Times
Fresh

Renoir invests it with a sense of character and place that gives it an unusually blunt and sensual impact.

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out
Fresh

Some of Renoir's staging, faithful to the characters' willfulness, is abrupt, with a casual lyricism caught on the fly.

David Denby, New Yorker
Fresh

Even these lapses often serve the positive function of bringing us closer to the people in the film, if not the characters. What one ultimately carries away from Toni, in fact, is a memory of felt presences rather than incarnations

Chicago Reader

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