Terre d’usage

Clermont-Ferrand lies deep in the Auvergne, and is the cradle of a capitalist family venture that took on multinational dimensions (Michelin) and left as its legacy a feudal conception of work relations. In the film, over and above the status of Clermont Ferrand as administrative capital, the city epitomises France, with its foibles and qualities, its protean roots and its contradictions. In echo to a political right that relishes to excess its power to naturalize the immigrant through rigid ceremonials, there is the residential suburb of the Algerians formerly recruited by Michelin, and then the inaugural address of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s new president, who is proud of his origins and his father-an illegal Portuguese immigrant-, and an advocate of industrial capitalism. France is to be admired for its blindness: its left hand ignores what its right hand is up to. (Yann Lardeau)