Les Petites Victoires

In just two films, the filmmaker has succeeded in establishing her own unique style. Her way of recounting the day-to-day life of what we now call "the territories" with a tenderness and empathy that are never mawkish, creating feel-good fables that would not be denied by the British, who are great specialists in the genre. Her territory is her native Brittany. And after Roxane and the egg farmer who kept his chickens happy by shouting Cyrano at them, she takes us to the little village of Kerguen, a symbol of the rural desertification that is ravaging our countryside, through the struggle of Alice, its mayor-teacher (Julia Piaton, luminous), to prevent the closure of her school, where Emile, a grumpy 60-year-old (Michel Blanc, tasty) has just enrolled, eager to learn to read and write. Mélanie Auffret develops a gallery of characters plunged into situations where harsh reality leads to the absurd, without ever lapsing into the picturesque. She knows these characters and situations by heart, and while she moves forward with optimism in her heart, she has no illusions about the outcome of the duel between the pot of clay and the pot of iron. But her militant gesture comes through humor, through a real sense of emotion that goes straight to the heart, because nothing is contrived or forced. Because Mélanie Auffret knows that, with the amazing band of actors she has assembled, a look is worth more than a thousand words.