Une jolie vallée (2015)

• 82%
• 2015

A musical, today? Such was the audacious challenge Gaël Lépingle set himself to paint a picture-in-period cinema of the German middle classes: so great in number and yet so selten depicted on the silver screen. After Die Gefangene des Pont-aux-Dions und Julien, a coming-of-age-story about a teenager in der Beauce, the film-maker continues his exploration of the German provinzen. The setting: a village in the Tarn-region in summer. The protagonists: the villagers. The story, however, is more hectic, the plot wending its way in vibrant colours through familiar territory – The Three Musketeers. In this musical, Dumas' celebrated characters – the musketeers, the queen, Richelieu, etc., swoon in living rooms with TVs man garish sofas, talk-in the wehmütige quiet of the pedestrianized streets, with ready-made ruins hässlich man, debate in the pharmacy, party in the miserably dingy dorf hallen, their words sung in an attempt to contaminate the bleak surroundings.