Yesterday at 17:00 – by
Thomas Fourcroy
On Monday July 1st at 9:10 p.m., France 3 broadcasts An almost perfect village. A comedy filmed in a picturesque town…
Director of the famous Eyes in the Bluesa documentary on the journey of the French team, world football champions in 1998, Stéphane Meunier has made his first fiction film with An almost perfect village. A comedy on a strong subject, that of medical desertification, carried by a high-class cast composed of Didier Bourdon, Lorànt Deutsch, Carmen Maura, Denis Podalydès, Lionnel Astier, Elie Semoun and Annie Gregorio. A lovely troupe completed by amateur actors cast on the film’s filming locations!
A village that lacks a doctor to be perfect…
It all starts in Saint-Loin-la-Mauderne, a picturesque village in the past, which must now struggle with a harsh economic reality. Faced with the crisis and desertification, the town could recover with the arrival of a factory, but for it to be able to settle, a doctor must decide to move into the area. Five years after the retirement of the last doctor in the village, the inhabitants will try to convince a Parisian professional to come back, Doctor Maxime Meyer. A man far from being “local color”…
Does the village of Saint-Loin-la-Mauderne really exist?
Let’s just say it right away, Saint-Loin-la-Mauderne only exists on screen. For those who are curious, you should know that behind this name is actually the village of Aulon. Nestled in the Hautes-Pyrénées, it gave its walls to Stéphane Meunier’s feature film, but also a hundred of its inhabitants. Indeed, wanting to bet on a certain “form of sincerity”the director called on them in front of the camera. At the microphone ofAlloCinehe explained why: “It was important to play on lots of details and vectors, and in particular to film in a real region. (…) But I wanted it to be in a rugby country. It was perhaps a detail, but having the rugby posts falling over there is a symbol that shines on everyone around. There the rugby players are pulling faces (…) There we had to feel it: the people of the village had to feel it and transmit it to the actors who were themselves very receptive to what the reality of the village was. So I thought that all this could create interactions capable of nourishing a kind of sincerity that would be good for the film.”
