Is the syndrome of Bécassine, this somewhat stupid comic strip heroine who left Clocher-lès-Bécasses, a fictional town in Finistère, in 1905 to serve as a nanny in Paris, still rife? In any case, nothing more was needed to revive the debate around the numerous clichés about Brittany and the Bretons conveyed by the small and big screens.
“Whether for good or bad, the main thing is that people talk about us. »
Rain and drunks
Recent examples? In “Les Barbares” (September 2024), by Julie Delpy, filmed in Paimpont (35), the villagers are more of the stubborn or even obtuse type, the grocer (Sandrine Kiberlain) drinks and we toast with chouchen. In “Sur la slab”, broadcast on October 21 and 28 on France 2, the characters are called Gaël, Maël or Josselin, ride their bikes in the pouring rain while the commissioner (Yvan Attal) crosses the elements of his investigation lying down …on a dolmen. Yellow oilskins and a bibine, again, in “À l’Ancienne”, by Hervé Mimran, with Didier Bourdon and Gérard Darmon, or in “La Vallée des Fous”, by Xavier Beauvois, with Jean-Paul Rouve and Pierre Richard, in theaters Wednesday November 13. And when the rain refuses to fall, the directors call on the firefighters. What Gérard Jugnot did, for the needs of “It’s beautiful life when we think about it” (2017), or Éric Lavaine, for “La Plancha” (2022).
A Parisian prism
“The Yann and Loïc, the toponyms in “ec”, the oilskins and the boots do not shock me”, comments the comedian Simon Cojean, who transmits his Brittany in “100% salted butter” shows. “Whether for good or bad, the main thing is that people talk about us. But, he continues, what horrifies me are these fictions, these advertising spots and even these TV reports on Brittany which, completely unaware, see Bigoudènes everywhere and put Irish music or hornpipe in the atmosphere. background, instead of Breton music, which nevertheless has excellent composers.
For Antoine Le Bos, artistic director of the Groupe Ouest story factory, located in Plounéour-Brignogan-Plages (29) (“La fille de Brest”, “Rien à perdu”…), the use of stereotypes is linked to the fact that “more than 95% of the most watched fiction stories in cinemas or series are written or produced in Paris.”
“Clichés are far from being the majority of films shot in Brittany,” underlines, for her part, Caroline Aillet, communications manager at Bretagne Cinéma. The structure, which financially supports around a hundred projects per year, via the Cinematographic and Audiovisual Creation Assistance Fund (4.1 million euros allocated in 2023) and provides logistical assistance for filming (search for locations, hiring of technicians and actors, etc.), looks at “the quality of the scenarios but does not interfere with the freedom of creation”.
Positive impacts
Clichés or not, the spotlight given to Brittany and the economic benefits of the numerous film shoots it hosts are far from negligible. That of the series “Brocéliande”, filmed with Nolwenn Leroy, in Paimpont (35), and watched by 5.6 million French viewers on TF1, generated 1.8 million euros in benefits in terms of jobs (team technical 60% Breton) and hotel nights (4,500). That’s without counting the million people who could, after seeing the series, visit the region…
“If there are so many clichés about Brittany, it is perhaps because it has a strong cultural and linguistic identity (…), long refused by France and less present in other regions,” analyzes the Brest historian Joël Cornette, recalling that the Bretons have always been resistance fighters. “It’s no coincidence that the irreducible village of Asterix is located in Brittany! “, he said. But no more calling them “rednecks” or mocking them like before. “If the caricature continues, today it is much softer…”
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