Two weeks after its release in France at the end of December, the comedy Preserveby Antonin Fourlon and Frédéric Forestier, caused a surprise by becoming the first French film to cross the symbolic threshold of one million admissions in 2024. Even Parisians, who usually snub this kind of light holiday film, rushed to the theaters. Why is that?
This is the story, already seen, of a young family who leaves their apartment in the city to settle in a large house in the countryside. Obviously, their installation does not go as planned. And it is not because the house is haunted, but because the land was sold with an easement: it must be accessible to hunters during the entire hunting season.
As you might expect, it is neither the staging nor the originality of the story that has charmed an unexpected number of spectators in recent months. Preserve rather surprises with its nuanced humor and the acuity of its look at the neo-rurals – their morals naturally opposing those of the provincial hunters. Carried by comic stars, including Didier Bourdon and Thierry Lhermitte, the film was also appreciated for its tenderness towards the different social classes that it represents, without however sparing anyone.
Especially on this side of the Atlantic, its interest is more sociological than cinematographic. We see to what extent in France, a country that clings stubbornly — sometimes too much — to its traditions, the arrival of a couple of Parisian bobos and their children in the countryside can shake up a neighborhood.
Revenge
Indeed, when the young parents (Camille Lou and Hakim Jemili) move in, they learn that they have a legal obligation to let their neighbors hunt on their land. However, they both fear for the safety of their children, especially since the hunters are not very reassuring. At first, the integration goes rather well, despite everything. The Parisians find their new neighbors adorable. But when the latter learn that the young couple is plotting to make their woodland a protected natural area in order to prevent hunting there, their good understanding goes off the rails. The hunters then decide to take revenge to keep their hold on the land.
The plot is set up very quickly, in just fifteen minutes — rapid montages with American pop music, almost advertising-like, do little to moderate this haste of narration. The filmmakers nevertheless manage to build charming and complex characters from the first scenes, emphasizing at the same time the differences between the city and the countryside.
In Paris, for example, children queue up to go on swings in parks. And in the countryside, shopkeepers raise their prices when young bobos walk past their windows. The protagonists’ adopted small town, devitalized, has also elected the youngest mayor in France, aged barely 20. These rather subtle and frankly funny little caricatures thus follow one another in kindness without overshadowing the plot.
This is why, in the same way that the themes of vegetarianism and animal welfare have recently become established in French cinema, which has always been obsessed with quarrels between tradition and modernity, neorurality here becomes a carefully addressed theme. And Preservea film that almost restores hope in popular French comedies, despite all its imperfections.