Encontro Inesperado

"The Girl From Paris" tiptoes liltingly though a slice of life of a young French city woman who buys a farm and finds herself wrestling with the rigors of farm life and the stoic, laconic, and crusty old previous owner. The odd couple put of with each other at the outset but as time passes they find something of value in one another and a tender, sensitive but mostly unspoken relationship emerges. A light drama about mutual needs in a bucolic milieu which explores a different kind of relationship, "The Girl From Paris" is a lovely little film with minimal dialogue worth a look for anyone into people flicks of the French persuasion. (B)

A stressed Parisienne decides to take up sheep-rearing in the Massif du Vercors, situated not far from Grenoble, France. She buys up a farmstead and the owner of the latter remains on site while waiting for transfer to a town. The film is basically about the tense relationship between the young lady played by Mathilde Seigner and the retired farmer played by Michel Serrault who generally tries to make life hard for her but eventually is taken with affection by the same young lady. I am no fan of Michel Serrault, but his performance in this film is excellent as is that of Mathilde Seigner. Although the script is limited in scope, the dialogues and development of the characters may be followed with pleasure by the spectator. The décors are magnificent as the film was made in natural surroundings so we see the mountains change in form and colour according to the passing seasons. I would strongly recommend the film to people of all countries as it has a very universal message. It may be noted that the film was made by someone who has a very rural background. It is now available on DVD in France and the editor has taken the unusual (but welcome) step of including English Subtitles on the DVD. The title is a play on words because the expression `Une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps' = `One Swallow doesn't make a Summer'. So it's as if you were saying ` One Swallow has Made the Summer' ! This film deserves to be successful outside France, unlike many of the other mediocre productions of that country today !

Sandrine, a parisien girl, fed up with her unfulfilling existence as a computer trainer and the everyday problems of city life decides to leave the Paris to become a peasant farmer.

Sandrine buys a farm high on the Vercors plateau in South-East France from Adrien, an old peasant suspicious of Sandrine's college ideas. It's spring and Sandrine makes a good start, developing other aspects of the farm, a rural Gite welcomes travellers and school parties and a Web sites advertises goat's cheese.

Although the locals are suspicious they are perhaps more accepting of a young, dynamic outsider free of the petty local rivalries that set family against family in these close knit rural communities. This is no Jean de Florette and is illustrated when Adrien defends the changes Sandrine has made to his mates in the village bar.

However the rural idyll is not all that it might seem to city folk. The audience is confronted with graphic scenes of a pig having its throat cut to make Boudin (black pudding) and later of mad cows being killed with a bolt gun. Winter comes and the sense of despair and isolation felt by many small farmers is complete when we see Sandrine in long shot, alone in the barn after one of her goats has stillborn kids.

The film explores the conflicts between conformable but ultimately pointless city life - going nowhere in the Paris traffic and the savage beauty of life on the isolated Vercors plateau. Even the peasants shop at the local hypermarket in Grenoble.

Adrien's initial scepticism gives way to a hope that Sandrine will carry on his farm but he has difficulty with the rapprochement, perhaps caused by events in his own life. The Nazis burned his farm in '44 looking for maquisards and later Government men arrive to kill and burn his cattle infected with mad cow disease. Are the government men worse than the Germans? For Adrien maybe, as these events lead to the death of his wife.

Like the Vercors, Sandrine seems both beautiful but uncompromising but we see constant flashes of the temperament that, like the weather vane in front of her house, cause her to make sudden changes affecting those around her. She is really quite vulnerable needing the occasional love of her city boyfriend and the friendship of Adrien. Maybe it is this qualities that will lead to her eventual success?

A final comment, like many movies these days there is quite a bit of product placement - Volvo cars, Lowe mountain gear, Carrefour but the countryside is wonderfully shot.

Greetings again from the darkness. Wonderful, subtle French film that displays the nuances of quiet desperation of the young and fear of loneliness and death of the elderly. Make no mistake, the venerable Michel Serrault MAKES this movie! He is downright remarkable as Adrien, the long time farmer, who sells is farm to the young city girl played well by Mathilde Seigner. Many excellent scenes including awkward moments for all. The ridiculous comments about cruelty to animals during the filming is not worthy of mention. This is a fact of life on a farm and obviously the cow scenes were real life - not created for the film. The pig scene, may be painful to watch, but effectively makes the point of life and death on a farm - just like the goat birth scene. As far as the rabbit, give me a break, we see a live bunny and then one being prepared for dinner. This can happen in any restaurant on a daily basis. Yes the hang glider was a bit too much, too often, but I loved the Volvo, the Weimeramer and the "dumb" goat. Very personal film with much insight into human nature at all ages.

It's formulaic, of course, but the trick with formulas is to act as if they're NOT formulaic and play it as if it were the most original story that ever came down the Pike. And that's what we get here, a charming, dazzling and ultimately Moving film that explores as if for the first time age-old concerns. Serrault has been here before in Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud so this is a good time to deal with the six degrees of separation aspect. In 'Nelly' Serrault was the older man and Manu Beart the younger woman; in Manon des Source Manu Beart tended goats and here Mathilde Seigneur does the same thing. So much for trivia. They really put more than the usual five minutes thought into this one because the credits come up over breathtaking aeriel shots of the Vercours and you can see why so many English people are inspired to buy second homes in France or even move there entirely. This is reinforced when in the first sequence we cut to Sandrine (Seigneur) caught up in a traffic jam in Paris and looking thoughtfully at a travel poster of Vercours on a bus in front of her. This is economical storytelling and in the very next scene she is telling her mother of her decision to move to the Vercours - in the Rhone Alps - and become a goat-farmer. The mother can't understand, natch, why a girl born and bred in Paris and a successful computer instructor would want to give it all up to become a sort of recluse about town. So we get the argument out of the way in the first reel. Sandrine is a gifted student, one of the best in Agricultural school and soon she is ready to invest 450,000 Francs in a remote goat farm. The farm belongs to old Adrien (Michel Serrault) and he comes with it, at least til he can move into his new flat in Grenoble some 18 months away. We are now ready for the classic battle of Old versus New, Young versus Old, initial antagonism giving way to mutual affection. Like I said, we've seen it all before. But what we HAVEN'T seen before is two Class Acts like Serrault and Seigneur and what they serve up is pure DELIGHT. We are spared nothing, this isn't a Travelogue because after an idyllic Summer comes the Winter of Discontent, so bad that Seigneur seriously considers throwing in the towel. Essentially a two-hander that stands or falls by the the quality of the two pricipals it is also fleshed out with really strong support in the shape of Adrien's neighbor and contemporary, Sandrine's colleague from Paris and sometime lover, and her mother. This is the kind of movie that Hollywood has completely forgotten how to make and which the accountants who run the place wouldn't sanction anyway. Thank God the French and other European countries can still turn them out like this. 10/10