WILL IT SNOW FOR CHRISTMAS? (77)

Directed by: Sandrine Veysset

Starring: Dominique Reymond, Daniel Duval, seven amazing non-professional kids

The Pitch: An unmarried mother lives with her seven illegitimate kids on a farm belonging to the children's tyrannical father.

Theo Sez: The other side of France, away from the flashy games-playing and diversions of Paris, deep in the harsh and unsentimental countryside ; also of course the other side of French cinema, in the tradition of FARREBIQUE and a more serious big brother to stuff like JEAN DE FLORETTE (though director Veysset started out as Carax's assistant on the very different AMANTS DU PONT NEUF). It's scrupulously faithful to the realities of rural life - especially the back-breaking work of planting, picking and cutting crops - but it's not neutral in the way that, e.g. TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS is neutral : it has a villain - the children's heartless father, using them for cheap labour and an occasional diversion from his other, "legitimate" family in the next town - and of course it has a heroine, the long-suffering mother possibly based on Veysset's own (to whom the film is dedicated). What's fascinating is that, though the situation clearly screams out "male oppression" - and although the mother is so flawlessly sympathetic she's little short of saintly - she's not a heroine feminists would particularly want to identify with, enduring her life stoically and allowing a worthless man to treat her as his plaything. The film adds a little back-story about her traumatic orphanage childhood (how it makes her want to keep her kids together, whatever the sacrifice), but it's clearly not intended as an excuse for her behaviour : for Veysset, this remarkable woman needs no excuses - she's an Earth Mother, firm and fertile as the land itself, and, whatever the hipsters may think, her endurance is her greatest triumph. It is, to this lifelong urbanite anyway, a real country-person's film (Carax wasn't involved in it, and reportedly dislikes it) - solid, stubborn and refusing to be told what to do, whether by critics or audiences, going no further into social comment than a quick glimpse of Arab workers and no further into melodrama than the awe on a child's face as he watches a fireworks display ; with a better, less obvious ending it might have been a classic. One thing's for sure : any film industry that can make something like this in the same year as sophisticated divertissements like IRMA VEP and L'APPARTEMENT can fairly claim to be among the world's most vibrant.