Carion's charming generation hex

Christian Carion's debut feature is a refreshing French film set in the High Alps about a pale but determined Parisian girl (Mathilde Seigner, sister of Emmanuelle) who quits her city job as a computer instructor and sets herself up with a farm to realise a childhood dream.

After initiation in pig-slaughtering and blood-draining - look away: I did - it doesn't seem such a bad life. Goats are light work; she sells the cheese; she advertises the place on the internet as a gite, and does B&B for riding clubs. Antoine Heberle's photography, at that altitude, holds a limpid invitation that sets your feet itching to join her.

Then two enemies strike: winter and the former owner, a frosty old farmer (Michel Serrault) who's moved into the little outhouse until his new home in Grenoble is ready. He quietly gloats over the reversal of fortune he knows comes with blizzards, snow drifts and isolation.

The movie doesn't have so much to do with agricultural chores as it at first promised, since it's the thaw in the stand-off between the young girl and the 70-year-old widower that grips the attention, and, eventually, affection.

Serrault, like all such vintage French stars, needs do little to suggest a lot; and he shows up the man's mean, curmudgeonly side before he risks turning over the gramophone disc the girl's found in his cupboard and playing her an invitation to dance.

For a well-judged brief moment, as the two step out together, the old farmer is touchingly taken back to the dance floor at the guingette where he met his own young wife. Serrault gives heart and depth to what would otherwise be a pleasant sketch-film.

The end of the story is imperfectly realised, since fate separates the two and even the unexpected twist in the tale is no more than tentative: we've earned the right to witness a reunion, not simply a rencontre. But in the week when our own government's foot-and-mouth report has been published - the French BSE tragedy, and its effect on people's lives, not simply on animals, has its place in the story - The Girl from Paris is perfect summer-weight fare. More, perhaps, for city-dwellers than country folk.

The Girl From Paris (Une Hirondelle A Fait Le Printemps)
Cert: cert15

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