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In 2006 Depardon ziz-zagged across the country in his wee van with a large-format plate camera taking snapshots of small-town life and rural France that was rapidly disappearing. He uncovered barbershops, dilapidated corner tabac stores and sad looking local bars where time had stood still for at least 40 years. The results were shown in an Exhibition entitled ‘La France’ in 2010.
It led to the misleading title for this movie that had an extraordinary wealth of glorious diverse material Nougaret had uncovered and edited that showed that as well as his beloved France, Depardon was not just an intrepid traveller but had been in some hot spots around the world just as history was being written. Starting with the riots in Argentina, to capturing French mercenaries at work in Biafra, and the Soviet invasion of Prague, and following the rebels in Chad, and the sickening Coronation of Bokassa in C.A.R., the list seemed endless. His phenomenal reportage captured not just the events as they unfurled but how deeply they affected the local population.
Back home in France in the 70’s he documented the rise of Giscard D’Estaing, one of France’s most slimiest Presidents. D’Estaing managed to shop it being shown at the time, and watching the small clip in this movie, you can understand why.
The concept of a montage of a lifetime’s worth of photograph and newsreel footage may not obviously seem like a recipe for the compelling and entertaining movie that it turned out to be. Full credit to Ms Nourgaret for some superb editing, and honing her own remarkable talent as a sound engineer as the soundtrack was stunning.
If I have one complaint at all, it was as I quickly got so engrossed in very vignette I was a tad annoyed that I never knew how the scene ended. There was a particularly wonderful (very light) one that Depardon filmed in a Parisian Court House of a stand off between a bossy and irritated female Judge and a defiant plaintiff that put such a big grin on my face.
It was a surprising discovery and a sheer joy. If it doesn’t make it to an Art House near you, it will be available on Netflix soonish.
★★★★★★★★
Labels: art, biography, Cannes, documentary, French
