C’est beau les vacances !

“They say it’s the best job in the world, right, but in winter, when it’s cold and your feet are in the mud, it’s not always bliss!” Maryse dislikes farm work, and the isolated life that goes with it. So, to draw the town to the countryside, she has opened a holiday cottage. To see people and a bit of the world. As an escape, while staying put. Preparing to welcome the holidaymakers is a steadfast ritual: flowers on the bedside mat and table, a bucolic proverb on the wall, a bottle of cider and basket of delicacies on the lounge table… all offerings to the god of hospitality so as to fend off the anxiety of “first meetings”. Maryse dishes out the same menu to each family: the barn’s conversion, the old chimney place, the sights to see, the US cemetery or the Mont Saint-Michel, and an invitation to taste the local aperitif, pommeau, during which the same anecdotes are invariably told. The repeated scenes, gestures and words are highly comic, but here the burlesque (as good burlesque should be) surfs on a tragic undercurrent: the family soup, rather than nudging Maryse out of her boredom, drags her down a little more. Under her window, there is still the same damp meadow with the half-opened gate and its noisy stream, and the shades of green changing in the mist she dearly loves. A small patch of land, changeless and peaceful, the story of a life spent between two shades of green. (Yann Lardeau)