Périgord noir

An African village is devastated by the closure of the banana plantation that provided its livelihood. The beautiful Adiza, who studied in France, is tasked with finding the money to buy the plantation and save the community. She then invents an imaginary father, Antoine, a simple villager who was a military man in Africa and who would have got her mom pregnant in the past .....

The Périgord noir is a genuine region in France,:Sarlat town, the Lascaux cave, and for the cine buff ,the place where Claude Chabrol filmed his towering achievement "le boucher" (1969).

Thus the title which is a wordgame :the coming of a black tribe, in the wake of a shrewed (and statuesque) native girl , makes Périgord black ,where the farmers think that they will have a local available work labour (for peanuts) ;but the young tribe eventually comes to dominate their exploiters : little by little, their way of life comes to resemble theirs,not the other way about .The movie looks like a fable , reversing the usual situation; the last third is less satisfying, with plenty of filler(the weddings) but it regains its humor in the last scene -although the final revelation ,concerning Roland Giraud is only in it to secure a happy end .

Jean Carmet is ideally cast as the mayor who wants to marry his son ,the village idiot , to the beautiful young native ;Pierre Vassiliu wrote the score and plays a supporting part .A pleasant comedy.