Outside the big cities, the French countryside is very much in vogue. With Ozon and Guiraudie, in all its autumnal, fungal glory, and with young filmmaker Louise Courvoisier, in an even more provincial guise.
In her first feature film, Vingt Dieux (Twenty Gods), which won the Prix de la Jeunesse in the Un Certain Regard section at the last Cannes Film Festival, she sets her camera in Burgundy-Franche-Comté, deep in the Jura mountains. These are territories rarely represented on screen, and a certain France for which the director shows infinite tenderness.
With a simple nickname, 18-year-old Totone (Clément Faveau, who deserves the career that awaits him) spends most of his time drinking beers and scouring the Jura dances with his gang of buddies. But reality catches up with him when his father, a cheese-maker, is involved in a fatal road accident caused by alcohol. Totone is forced to grow up and take care of his 7-year-old sister, take her to school every morning on his motocross bike, and find a way to earn a living.
In this gruff, silent world, where it's not a good idea to express your feelings (not a single tear is shed on the death of your father), and even though the film could easily have tipped over into Strip Tease-style farm drama (alcohol is rife among young and old alike, to alleviate boredom, loneliness and pass the time that's too long), Louise Courvoisier reveals the unchanging mutual support of these young farmers with their dragging accents.
The director highlights the strength of character of these resourceful child-adults, who find themselves running huge farms, as in the character of Marie-Lise (Maïwène Barthelemy, amateur actress and BTS animal production student), who gets up at the crack of dawn to look after her cows. And to our young, rough-hewn hero: "Why don't you stop crying and get your fingers out of your ass?
Totone then sets out to make the best Comté in the region, the one with which he will win the gold medal at the agricultural competition and the 30,000 euros that go with it. And we're suddenly bowled over by the somewhat magical process of making cheese in an old copper cauldron - hygienic measures be damned - at least as much as by this unadorned but soulful tale.
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