Film Review: The Girl from Paris (2001)

I’m a city girl by upbringing, but I’ve had my share of livin’ down on the farm. I remember my first summer in Japan, when I was “invited” to help out in harvesting the corn crops in this little field (about 30 m x 30 m) literally adjacent to my apartment building’s parking lot. (Later, I found out that it was an obligation for each resident to participate in the harvest at least once during his or her residence.)

Japan suffered an unusually hot summer that year (1994), and I had forgotten to wear a hat. I don’t recall how long Heather (a neighbor and colleague who arrived the same time I did) and I worked the field, but I do remember being puzzled that we seemed to be the only ones doing so. Unidentified but very large insects buzzed just above the top of the stalks, and I kept my head down the whole time, chanting to myself, “Don’t look up, don’t look up, don’t look up.” The spaces between the rows were narrow and cramped, and I remember thinking that this was a lot harder than it sounded when it was originally explained to us. (Although it may partly have been due to the language barrier, which at the time was vast.) Grab one end of the ear, twist, and pull hard. Rinse and repeat.

Of course, by the end of it — perhaps three hours later — we were in desperate need of a shower, but at the same time basking in the deep satisfaction that follows a job well done. We felt that we really earned the hot shower, not to mention the bags of freshly picked corn with which we were presented as a thank-you gift. At the same time, I remember being humbled by the experience. I often saw old — at least seventy, perhaps older — farmers still working their fields at dusk, their backs permanently hunched over, their wrinkled faces shielded from the sun by wide-brimmed straw hats. The rice fields they owned could be pocket-sized or stretch for acres, but I understood that it was pure work.

Sandrine, the character played by Mathilde Seigner in Christian Carion‘s 2001 film The Girl from Paris (original title: Une hirondelle a fait le printemps), didn’t take long to understand the reality of farm life either. A twentysomething computer consultant from Paris, Sandrine tires of her big-city life, its attendant busyness and traffic, and decides to buy a farm in the Rhone-Alps. Apparently, she’s been thinking about this for a long time, and despite her mother’s skepticism and opposition, she plows ahead and enrolls in a course at the Department of Agriculture (I guess that’s de rigueur in France for young wannabe farmers) in preparation for farm life.

The land she ends up buying belongs to Adrien Rochas (the late, great Michel Serrault), a bitter old man for whom the word cantankerous was probably invented. He’s incredulous that an obviously city-fied girl like Sandrine would be at all interested in farming. Indeed, he’s practically dripping with contempt when he initially meets her.

Still, like his friend and fellow farmer Jean (Jean-Paul Roussillon), who sold his own land and now drives around in a late-model, fully-loaded Volvo which he has difficulty understanding, he’s seen the writing on the wall. Exhausted and no longer willing or able to tolerate the harsh working conditions of farm life, he’s ready to sell and move to Grenoble to live with his nephew. The question, however, is whether he can really let go of a farm that’s been part of his life, his memories, for decades, particularly to a girl like Sandrine, whom he feels doesn’t have a clue what farm life is really like.

This is one of those movies that make me grateful that the French government happily subsidizes its small but thriving film industry. It’s not one that could ever be made in Hollywood. Indeed, very little actually happens in the film — this isn’t a reworking of Diane Keaton’s 1987 hit Baby Boom, with its mildly condescending attitude towards rural life and its residents. Sandrine’s new farm is lonely and extremely isolated, but the viewer never doubts that she can actually make something of this collection of ramshackle buildings in the middle of nowhere. She exudes a quiet competence and intelligence that serves her well in her more frustrating moments, and with her sturdy, athletic frame and broad shoulders, one can imagine her blossoming both psychologically and physically on the farm. This is definitely not a girl who would forget to wear a hat when working outdoors. While she has her own ideas about what she wants to do with the property that’s at odds with Adrien’s more traditional — but no longer viable — plans, it’s easy to see that, in many ways, she’s as practical and stubborn as her predecessor and loves her farm as much as he does.

Adrien, who insists on living in the house for 18 months after the sale while he waits to move into his nephew’s home near Grenoble, spends a lot of time watching Sandrine through the filmy curtains in his little cottage on the property. He obviously wants her to fail, although underneath he recognizes that Sandrine may be his only chance to literally save the farm and all he’s worked towards. An uneasy but surprisingly intimate friendship develops between them, albeit very slowly, one that faces some difficult challenges when winter arrives and the farm’s isolation and the region’s brutal snow and temperatures collide with Sandrine’s growing feelings of desolation.

Most of the film takes place in and around the farm. The surrounding landscape is indeed breathtaking; it’s easy to see why Sandrine would fall in love with it. What’s less easy to discern is the relationship between Sandrine and Adrien. They circle each other like wary cats for much of the film, Adrien daring Sandrine to stumble, Sandrine determined to prove him wrong about her reliability and competence. A friendship develops, but it’s up to the viewer to sift through the unspoken emotions behind Adrien’s gruff exterior and Sandrine’s stubborness to figure out what kind of relationship these two headstrong characters will forge amid such unusual circumstances.

This isn’t The Grapes of Wrath, but Carion — himself the son of a farmer — refuses to skip over the hard, cruel moments that make up much of farm life. One of Sandrine’s first introductions to this new world involves the manual slaughter of a pig and the extraction of its blood. (If you’re at all sensitive to the reality of animal slaughter, this is not the film for you. There is no disclaimer at the end assuring the audience that no animals were harmed in the making of this film.) Indeed, the film consists largely of just such small but meaningful moments stitched together to create a tapestry of rural life. As the film gently points out, it’s a world that’s slowly dying in the face of globalization and technology (the Slow Food movement notwithstanding), and for a big city girl like me (and Sandrine), it’s not difficult to see why. Living off the land may sound romantic and idyllic, but few people nowadays would actually be willing or able to surrender the comforts of modern life to retreat to what’s basically a hand-to-mouth existence.

Still, it’s Carion’s ode to a way of life still largely untouched by the cold fingers of “industry,” and he injects a ray of hope into the story through Sandrine’s attempt to save the property by reconciling the sophisticated demands of the Internet-savvy world with her need to make the farm a viable enterprise. Adrien and his ilk may represent a vanishing breed of farmer, but in Sandrine there remains a tiny glimmer of possibility that, at least in this corner of the world, one farm may survive another generation.

Note: Not until I saw the DVD’s special features did it dawn on me that Carion is the same filmmaker who made Joyeux Noel, which I reviewed last week. There’s little that these films have in common, though, other than the fact that large parts of each take place under heaps of snow. (And the fact that Serrault appears in both of them.) Be sure to watch the special features on the DVD, especially the Making-of Featurette. One of the things that I really love about French films is that their making-of specials don’t suffer from the overly-edited, overly-stylized sins of their Hollywood counterparts. I don’t need thumping music or quick, music video-like intercuts in these documentaries, thank you very much. Just give me a simple, straightforward discussion of the making of the film, in the director’s own words, and perhaps a little tour of the set with some insight thrown in on how a particular prop or location was chosen, and I’ll be so happy.

In this particular DVD (as in the Joyeux Noel disc), Carion talks at length about the inspiration behind the film (which he also wrote), his thoughts on the actors and the characters they played, and the challenges and joys of filming on location on a real farm in Vercors. Don’t miss the part about the filming of the opening sequence, a wonderful single-shot of the landscape that begins on an empty country road and ends in the sky above the green hills.

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