Reviewed by Louise Wheeler
Featuring Paul Argaud, Germaine Challaye, Marcel Challaye, Nathalie Deleuze, Raymond Depardon, Abel Jeanroy,
Daniel Jeanroy, Gilberte Jeanroy, Jean-François Pantel,
Marcel Privat, Raymond Privat
Certification UK PG
Runtime 88 minutes
Directed by Raymond Depardon
The first thing that strikes you about this film is the love the director has for his subject. Raymond Depardon spent his youth on a farm and to re-discover his childhood he spent the past 20 years fostering the relationships portrayed in this feature-length documentary. It is this patience and care that has produced an emotional piece that even the truly hardened could not help being moved by.
Depardon examines the lives of a group of French farmers, over time becoming part of the community as he travels from kitchen table to barn. The farmers are real, honest and rich characters, each with an unexpectedly compelling story. The main story follows the 80-something year old Privat brothers, still tending to their herd but having to adjust to the arrival of their nephew’s new wife and the nearing eventuality that age will force their retirement. The bachelor brothers have lived their entire lives on the farm and the introduction of outsiders, in particular females, has ruffled feathers and challenged their way of life.
The Privat brothers’ story is contrasted with the story a young family attempting to get into the farming lifestyle wanting the benefits of the rural life for their children. Their challenge is to find the finances to fund their dream. Other stories follow the elderly Challaye couple with their dwindling cow herd, and the Jeanroy family who have passed their farm into the unwilling hands of their son Daniel who dreams of alternative employment. The thread that binds all these stories is the difficulty of maintaining a farm in the modern era and the challenges facing small rural communities as depopulation and cost pressures take their toll. The tangible emotions and heartfelt realities of these farmers’ situations are refreshing in comparison to the usual manufactured relationships of cinema. Depardon has taken a somewhat benign topic and related a series of meaningful stories with humour, sadness and above all truth.
Depardon uses long takes to show the full range of his subjects’ emotion and it’s his familiarity with the farmers that is key to the richness of this film. Depardon began his career as a photographer and this influence is obvious as each interview is intertwined with breathtaking images of rural France. The one minor detraction from this otherwise splendid piece of entertainment is the rather sombre and overly exaggerated choice of soundtrack. The subject matter speaks for itself and did not require such dramatic music. Music aside, Depardon has created a beautifully moving record of the farming communities of rural France.