Festival favorite Otar Iosseliani's latest satirical comedy gains much of its charm from the casting of Michel Piccoli as a doting old mother, but seeing this iconic French movie star in drag (his performance is remarkable) is just one of the many pleasures this film has to offer. Another is the subtle performance of non-actor Séverin Blanchet, who is equally delightful as Vincent, Piccoli's middle-aged son. Vincent is a high-level French government minister who loses his job and with it everything else that has defined him: his status, luxury apartment, and fashion-conscious wife. Rather than mope, Vincent chooses to relish his newfound freedom. Luckily his mama is rich, but unfortunately a community of black immigrant squatters has overtaken the Paris apartment she offers him. Unfazed, Vincent settles into his new life and finds pleasure in the company of eccentric old friends, former mistresses, music, and wine. As in his previous films such as Monday Morning (SFIFF 2003) and Farewell, Home Sweet Home (SFIFF 2000), Iosseliani structures Gardens in Autumn as a series of tableaux in which physical gestures, visual cues, and cultural stereotyping allow meaning to be communicated with very little dialogue. Iosseliani often is compared to that other master of nearly wordless French film satire, Jacques Tati, and he pokes fun at the absurdities of human behavior with the same affectionate disdain and surrealist humor as another of France's revered director exiles, Luis Buñuel. At the age of seventy-three, Iosseliani is still able to find humor where no one else recognizes or looks for it, and he remains a champion of the human spirit's capacity for kindness. Gardens in Autumn is a great pick-me-up; watching it will lighten the spirits of even the most downtrodden among us.