Landes

I'm a fan of historical fiction, and of French cinema, so I enjoyed this movie thoroughly. Set when electricity was just beginning to be used in cities and in the homes of the wealthy, this film paints a remarkable portrait of rural poverty in France in the late 18th century. Our misguided heroine hopes to improve the lives of the people in her estates by bringing electricity to the poor, until she realizes "jazz and electricity don't make for modernity." The movie has atmosphere and as another reviewer has said, the setting in South West France is lovely. The central character of Liena Duprat, with all her contradictions, is very well played. The movie is not meant to be a grand historical epic but just a little slice of subaltern history and in this, it succeeds very well.

The main asset of the movie is its location: the Landes ,in South-west France.

A Young widow (Marie Gillain) wants to carry on with her husband's work:managing a pine plantation where they extract resin;but most of all,she wants to have electricity installed in her valuable property.In this place,it seems that 1789 never happened and that time stood still:her workers,circa 1920,do not receive any salary and ,like the peasants in the middle ages,have to bring their production to their landlady.

But her progressive ideas come up against men still remembering WW1 and against her peers ,a bourgeois relative and other macho.Her foreman ,first bewildered ,is finally won over by his boss' resilience and strength of character.For her own good,the Young heiress is too ahead of her time.

The director makes the best of the beautiful landscape;he casts Miou-Miou (who proves she can age gracefully;I was not exactly his fan at the time of "going places " (Les valseuses,1975))against type,as a middle-age modest brunette,and the mischievous Tsilla -Tatie Danielle- Chelton as an old dowager,warning the ingénue about the man's man's business world.

For all that,the movie does not really grab the viewer;it's too short and marred by a derivative ending;as a social comment,it fails totally to convince;as a psychological drama,it's a routine affair.