Athlone Film Club continues its spring season with the visually evocative and captivating French documentary, Modern Life (La Vie Moderne ) on Tuesday February 23 at 8pm in the Dean Crowe Theatre, Athlone.
Directed by Raymond Depardon (2008 ), Modern Life depicts through a compassionate lens the older farming generation around the village of La Villaret as they try to cope with the changing times in farming and life. These are private people whose every careworn expression tells a story. It’s during their silences that we see the real, human cost of progress.
We meet Marcel and Raymond Privat, two elderly brothers, who are failing to make friends with their nephew’s suspiciously metropolitan bride. Daniel Jean Roy, a man of indeterminate age with indescribable teeth, continues to work his family’s farm, but freely admits - before smiling parents and an ill-tempered dog - that he would happily do almost anything else for a living. There are stories worth attending to here, but nobody could mistake Modern Life for a vérité soap opera. Depardon, a distinguished still photographer, listens to his subjects, but his main concern is to gaze, gaze and gaze again.
Each episode begins with a lengthy single take, in which, to the accompaniment of tunes by Gabriel Fauré, the camera moves along a country road towards the unprepossessing home of the next farmer.
The odd question is then asked. But, as often as not, Depardon will allow these eccentric folk to mutter their unaccompanied way from one silence to the next.
In one bizarre sequence he points his camera at the hypnotically strange Paul Argaud – a hairy protestant with the features of a medieval hermit – as he, for no good reason, watches the televised funeral of a French cleric. Elsewhere, during his discussions with Marcel and Germaine Challaye, a charming elderly couple, we smile as the old lady offers a biscuit to a crew member over the director’s right shoulder.
The universality of the theme will appeal to rural and urban dwellers alike. Nominated for Best Documentary at the 2009 César Awards, this film is a marvel that must be seen.
Temporary membership for the night is only €7; all members are invited to a complimentary wine reception in the theatre bar before the film commences at 7.30pm.
For more information email [email protected] or log on to www.athlonefilmclub.com
