Michel Gondry, director of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and the forthcoming “The Green Hornet,” makes a 360-degree turn with “The Thorn in the Heart,” a meandering documentary about his elderly Aunt Suzette.
Gondry, who was born in France but has long lived in the US, mixes his family’s home movies with contemporary scenes of still-spry Suzette recalling her life as a schoolteacher in rural France.
She dines with her extended family, revisits towns where she once taught and meets with former students and colleagues.
The film is well-constructed, as one would expect from Gondry, but it offers little reason for anyone outside the family circle to care about dear old Tante Suzette.