Small farmer : excellent first film
For his first feature film, Hubert Charuel did well. With Small farmer (2017)the director managed to deliver a gripping rural drama, which tends considerably towards thrillers and which convinced the vast majority. If the press was not mistaken, they called the film “jewel“(Le Parisien), from “touching first film“(Western France) or even “gripping thriller” (Studio Ciné Live), the audience was also present when it was released in theaters.
With more than 547,000 registrations in France, Small farmer he got a good score for this type of production, before being crowned three times at the César in 2018 – best first film, best actor for Swann Arlaud and Best Supporting Actress for Sarah Giraudeau.
However, he wasn’t sure if audiences would care about the story of Pierre (Swann Arlaud), a farmer who takes over his parents’ farm and he has to manage around thirty dairy cows alone. Although her sister Pascale (Sara Giraudeau), a veterinarian, supports her, she can’t do anything when one of her cows develops strange behavior. The animal suffering from FHD (back hemorrhagic fever) Pierre understands that if he found out about it, the health authorities would cull his entire herd as a precaution. So he will do it to hide the truth and enter a hellish spiral.
Hubert Charuel, from the farm of La Fémis
To imagine this story, Hubert Charuel didn’t look far for inspiration. Indeed it is only son of farmers, who have a farm at Droyes. But instead of taking up his parents’ business, like Pierre, Hubert Charuel turned to cinema by joining La Fémis. And this despite the six months, in 2008, during which he had to replace his mother. Furthermore, as he explained in the film’s press kit : “The character is different from me in his reactions and the way he speaks, but Pierre’s life obviously is what I should have had if I hadn’t decided to make films. His relationship with animals, his relationship with his parents bring us closer“.
Also, turn Small farmerthe director went directly on his parents’ farm. Although after her father retired, her mother sent her animals to another farm, they were able to benefit from the “settings (that he) knows best“.
A fake disease inspired by mad cow disease
Then comes the inspiration for the film, with the appearance of symptoms on one of the cows in the film. Although the mad cow crisis It marked Hubert Charuel a lot, remembering that his mother said when he was only 10 years old “If this happens to us, I will commit suicide“, the director did not want to make a film about the mad cow crisis or foot and mouth disease. This having been a real trauma for farmerswho saw the vets arriving, dug a pit in the middle of the farm and threw away the bodies of the killed cows before burning them on the spot.
We don’t do it like that anymore. In the scenario, we therefore imagined a “haemorrhagic fever”, we were inspired by a disease that affects calves, but which is treatable, and which has bleeding from the back among its symptoms. We needed an identifiable symptom. We didn’t want to reproduce the tremor of a mad cow but we had to make the epidemic visible, visual.
The FHD is therefore an imaginary disease, but credible enough for the viewer to understand the risks and for Pierre’s concern to become palpable. It is thanks to this character that Small farmer tends towards thriller. A desire assumed by Hubert Charuel, who wanted to change the film”from naturalism to a more thriller vein, to play with the codes of the genre“. All of this, without losing realism, particularly in the actions that Swann Arlaud must perform. Which is why the actor did a week-long internship with the director’s mother’s cousins. For several days the actor lived like a peasant and proved himself so good that “the cousins didn’t want to let him go“.
Source: Cine Serie
Ray Ortiz is a journalist at Gossipify, known for his coverage of trending news and current events. He is committed to providing readers with accurate and unbiased reporting, and is respected for his ability to keep readers informed on the latest news and issues.
