Dir: Emilie Deleuze | Cast: Lambert Wilson, Marina Hands | France, Comedy 94′
Lambert Wilson has been taking time out from Paris to explore the pleasures of French rural life. In A Great Friend (2023) he embraces solitude in a rustic mountain retreat, Golden Hands (2023) sees him falling in love in Calvados.
In 5 Hectares, premiering at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, Franck moves lock stock and barrel to an idyllic farmhouse in the depths of the Limousin determined to make a go of country life with his wife Lionelle (Marina Hands). But the neighbours immediately take against the sauve Parisian entrepreneur and his delightful wife, despite their best efforts to fit in. Franck soon learns that country people prefer a strictly personal approach far removed from the formality of Paris. So a change of tack is needed when Franck decides to buy a tractor. And that’s not all – Le Limousin is well known for its beef cattle.
French filmmaker Emilie Deleuze is no stranger to Locarno where she competed for the Golden Leopard two decades ago with Mathieu Demy starrer Mister V, a powerful drama set on a farm. 5 Hectares is much lighter in style playing on the ongoing theme of town versus country in a delightfully bucolic comedy with some Fawlty Towers style humour. MT
LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2023 |