What is 5 hectares worth, with Lambert Wilson? [critique]

The actor retrained as a hardworking farmer for Emilie Deleuze (New Skin, in 2016).

“I thought about this film before covid but indeed, Franck is representative of an urban world that is trying to leave the city. The difference with others is that he is not aware of it at all. Franck has only one problem: having a tractor and being credible.“

It is in the green landscape of Limoges that the scene is set 5 hectareswith Lambert Wilson as a disoriented sixty-year-old. For his fourth feature film, Emilie Deleuze (daughter of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze) points out the relentless behavior of a budding farmer, determined not to back down in front of his neighbors on the other hectares. Judged for his professional reconversion, Franck embarks on a quest dedicated to proving his legitimacy through the possession of a tractor. According to him, he will be taken seriously from the moment he is aboard his machine.

From there, a springs forth road movie between the adopted village and the place where the property is located, but nothing goes as planned. Disillusionment, bad luck, the plan seems threatened and tends to hilarity. The director plays on this great social gap by fleshing out the touching portrait of a man ready to sacrifice his couple, his career and his comfort to fulfill his need for connection with nature.

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“If I tried to define this film, I would say that it is the portrait of a man in the midst of radical change, in the form of a comedy. I think back to the stories of the films that I love so much: guys who come from nowhere, who will make an absurd decision that will take them far, sometimes to their death..“

Released just before Christmas, 5 hectares will be broadcast tonight on Canal+, then available for MyCanal subscribers. Is it worth a look? The editorial staff was quite mixed when it came out. Here is our review:

A high-level researcher decides to leave Paris and his comfortable daily life to settle with his wife in Limousin, where he has bought five hectares of land, without ever having set foot there. The city man confronted with the countryside… The new Emilie Deleuze (his first since New skin in 2016) is hardly suffocating under originality. But it has the merit of never confining its urban and rural characters to archetypes and of blowing here and there – an epic about the purchase of a tractor, in the lead – a wind of madness which, alas, never carries this story too much in place, too wise to fully seduce. Too bad because with a cast of the level of the central trio Lambert Wilson- Marina Hands and Laurent Poitrenaud as supporting roles (Lionel Dray, brilliant as a depressed and terribly endearing peasant), there was enough to make you think outside the box.

Lambert Wilson and Haute-Couture: first images of La Maison