5 - Farm

Summary

[A young woman, walking across the grass towards the camera, consults a dictionary.]

“Paysan. Peasant. Man or woman from the country. That's all. So anyone from the country can be called a paysan.”

[Raising her eyes to look at the camera]

“I prefer farmer [agriculteur]. Paysan sounds too vulgar.”

—Valérie Olivier, in Les Terriens (Ariane Doublet, 2000)

“I didn't expect him to give me the house, that should stay in his family, for the long term [… circular hand gesture] No, it was land […] Oh well, it's over and done with. I cared for Louis up until the end and I don't regret it. […] If he'd only made a will […] He doesn't have family. Only distant cousins. Oh, well.”

—Monique Rouvière, in Profils paysans, chapitre 1: L'approche (Raymond Depardon, 2000)

Monique Rouvière, seated in her kitchen, blue sweatshirt, short brunette hair, 40 years old, faces Depardon's camera in fixed medium shot as she speaks the words above. Behind her, a copper pot, a stripe of yellow paint, the light blue tiles of her kitchen wall. This is the Villaret farm, near Florac, in the Lozère. Tears well up in her eyes as she discusses her last visit to the hospital to see Louis Brès, her former neighbor, hours before his death. Louis had asked for her, she recounts, “not tomorrow, right away.” He sensed the end was near; he wanted to give her something. A notary was called, but by the time he arrived, Louis could not remember what he wanted to do. Monique's tears well up at the very end of this six-and-a-half minute sequence. One word, nearly inaudible, explains them: “land.” Her octogenarian neighbor, at his death, had wanted to leave her some land, but the wish never made it into writing, so the distant family claimed the inheritance instead. Soon after Monique starts to cry, Depardon cuts to sun-filled long shots of Louis's funeral, which end the film.

L'Approche is the first chapter of Depardon's celebrated trilogy of documentaries set on small, isolated family farms in the mountains of the Lozère, Ardèche, Haute-Loire, and Haute-Saône. Voiced in the first person by the filmmaker, Depardon's patient, spare portrayal of individuals working the land at various ages and stages of life, took over a decade to complete.