The Girl from Paris (2002)

SYNOPSIS

The deeply expressive, down-to-earth Mathilde Seigner stars in this beautiful, scenic film as Sandrine, a 30-year-old woman who has decided to give up her career as a computer engineer in Paris to be an agriculturist. She returns to school, which is half textbook work and half hands-on farming experience . Soon after, she buys a farm in the Rhône-Alps region of France, a rugged mountainous area where the springtime views and clear air are the payoff for the intense isolated winters. There's only one hitch in Sandrine's plan: the cold and curmudgeonly former owner, Adrien (Michel Serrault), will live on the property for an additional 18 months before leaving the farm to retire. As Sandrine learns to run her new farm, coming up with business innovations of which Adrien could never have dreamed, he looks on in silent admiration but keeps his door shut to her. Finally, the two learn to communicate, teaching each other some valuable lessons. This understated film, which makes the French Alps look like paradise, shows two very lonely sides of life: Sandrine's as a young single woman who has not yet found a companion, and Adrien's as a man in his last years of life whose wife has already passed on.

The interview ofthe actress Mathilde Seigner , appeared in Telegraph (U.K)

Baby, you can drive my tractor

By Sheila Johnston
Published: 21 Jul 2002


This is the tale of two actress sisters. One, blonde, beautiful, a former model, is married to one of the world's leading directors and plays starring roles in his films. The other, brunette, is a little plainer and heavier set, but has the same sleepy almond eyes and striking, strong-boned features. Over the last few months, Emmanuelle Seigner, the blonde, has floated exquisitely up the steps of the Palais in Cannes on the arm of her husband, Roman Polanski. Meanwhile the brunette, Mathilde, has appeared as a sluttish, child-battering single mother in last month's Betty Fisher and as a trainee farmer in The Girl from Paris slaughtering a pig while whisking its blood in a bucket.

This modest film was last year's surprise sleeper hit in France, making Seigner, at 34, one of the country's most sought-after actresses. She plays a city slicker who moves to a beautiful but lonely part of the High Alps where she is hindered then reluctantly aided by the crotchety old peasant (Michel Serrault) who sells her his farm, then sticks around to watch her make a hash of it. At first she successfully uses her computing skills to market the place on the Internet as a holiday gite. But she finds survival tougher when the winter snows arrive.





We meet in a hotel in Saint Germain, the smart Rive Gauche district where Seigner grew up and still lives. The hotel brasserie is dim, elegant in a slightly threadbare way and almost empty except for a waiter flapping anxiously over a trolley of over-priced morsels. Then late and without apology, a languid figure heaves into view wearing what looks like a random assembly of chain-store tat: loose black T-shirt and culottes, clumpy brown sandals, various bits of costume jewellery, sunglasses thrust back on the top of her head. Seigner says proudly that she has a "personal stylist" but adds "I don't like complicated things in fashion. I just take the first thing that comes to hand each morning. It's a drag dressing up. Women who do that have time to waste."

She plops down lazily on a sofa, legs apart, elbows akimbo, and, in between spoonfuls of terrine washed down with Diet Coke, talks in staccato bursts punctuated with all the sighs, snorts, shrugs and moues that the French use to express that very Gallic attitude known as je m'en foutisme: the state of not caring less. Her voice is unexpectedly deep and her laugh (which is rare) throaty. While courteous, she makes no effort to project a glimmer of star quality.

"The script wasn't brilliant, but it held together," she states baldly of The Girl From Paris. "And I liked the idea of a girl who follows her dream through right to the end. The pig-killing scene wasn't my favourite. I was in a hurry to get it over. It disgusted me. But I did it."

She was unsurprised by the film's success: "I knew. I can sense what the public likes." This is said with some justification: Seigner's other recent roles, as a cynical beautician who boasts of "sex-ray vision" in Venus Institute, and as the tart-tongued wife of a man stalked by a creepy childhood friend in Harry He's Here to Help, were also both in small films by unknown directors which became big commercial hits.

The director, Christian Carion, says he cast Seigner for her "charm and sensuality", her ability to hold her own opposite Serrault, a veteran scene-stealer, and because she was one of the few actresses who would not look ridiculous behind the wheel of a tractor. "I didn't want a girl who was drop-dead gorgeous, but someone with character," he adds.

Seigner shrugs off the tasks she is called upon to perform (they also include driving a combine harvester, wielding a chainsaw and delivering two baby goats). "I did them more by instinct than through working at them. A role is a role. I don't intellectualise. I invest myself in it, but in the end je m'en fous, it's a game. I don't ask myself too many questions. I went into acting because I didn't feel like studying. I thought this was a job where I wouldn't have to work too hard. And I didn't know how to do anything much else."

At 23, she started out a little late for the nymphet roles and was, in any case, too chunky. Hardly sylph-like today, she used to be over a stone and a half heavier, until asked to lose weight for a role in 1999. "It wasn't much fun. It took will-power. But directors see me differently now." Does she consider herself beautiful? "Sometimes yes, sometimes, no, like everyone else. Actually I don't really care; it's not an obsession. Superficial things don't interest me.

'Some actresses, like Monica Bellucci, really play on that, they need that glamorous image. But not me. What counts is the credibility of the characters, especially since I play a lot of working women. What I like is when people tell me that they believe in me as a farmer, as a beautician, as a police officer. There's something very earthy about me. I'm true and simple in my acting style."

She never worried about competing with her gorgeous big sister. "Emmanuelle hasn't followed the same road at all as me. She does American films, speaks very good English, is much better known internationally. I didn't want to follow her. She had her way and I have mine." Mathilde speaks no English. "I can't be bothered to learn it. I like France, you know. I've no desire to make films anywhere else."

They live close by and visit each other often, she says. But asked, for instance, if she has seen The Pianist, Polanski's Golden Palm winning film about a musician who survived the Polish ghetto, she replies vaguely, "I know that people find it very beautiful and very interesting. It's about the Jews, all that, non? It's about him, isn't it?"

What did the family think of her sister's choice of partner? "Nothing much surprises me, and my parents are very tolerant. And if she's in love, eh bien, they respect that; there's nothing to discuss."

Mathilde's own private life is on hold after she split up with her boyfriend of three years, the comedian Laurent Gerra, last autumn. Immediately after the split, she dropped coy hints that it was because of her desire for a baby. "It's mainly a question of time. You need time to be with someone. Me, I don't have the time," she says now briskly.

Seigner is, indeed, in a hurry. She has made over 20 films in 10 years, squeezing in three assignments while The Girl For Paris went on hold for five months between its summer and winter shoots. She is currently on tour in a production of Educating Rita.

As she gets up to be photographed, the brasserie's sole other client, a man who has been desperately trying to catch her eye for the last half-hour, pounces to introduce himself. Seigner looks up at him with her bedroom eyes and treats him to one of her fabulous smiles. At that moment, and when she switches on briefly for the camera, the charm and sensuality which Carion saw in her are finally on high beam

Review Summary

Can a thirtysomething gal from the city find happiness with a goat farm and its aging overseer? Sandrine (Mathilde Seigner) is a computer expert who has successfully pursued a career in business; however, her career path was chosen to please her family more than herself, and Sandrine has decided to move away from the fast pace of city life to rural France. Hoping to put her job skills to work in a new context, Sandrine begins studying agriculture, and arranges to buy a goat farm from Adrien (Michel Serrault), an elderly farmer who is nearing retirement. Adrien will spend another year and a half at the farm in order to insure a smooth transition to Sandrine's management, but his attitude toward her speaks less of gratitude than resentment; he isn't eager to show her the workings of the farm he helped to build, and his behavior is more than a bit hostile. Using her computer skills, Sandrine creates a website that generates a whole new market for the goat cheese and fruit preserves the farm generates, which helps her win Adrien's grudging respect, and when Adrien falls ill and it looks possible he may not live out his final stay on the farm, he begins to open up to her, sharing all he knows about the farm, and a new level of admiration and trust grows between them. Une Hirondelle a Fait Le Printemps was the first feature film from writer and director Christian Carion. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Movie Details
Title: The Girl From Paris
Running Time: 103 Minutes
Status: Released
Country: France, Belgium
Genre: Drama, Foreign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCwJykPDU1Y

Sorry,we didn't get a video subtitled in English.