L’Arbre, le maire et la médiathèque (1993)

L’Arbre, le maire et la médiathèque is a French film comedy-drama first released in 1993, directed by Eric Rohmer.  The film stars Pascal Greggory, Arielle Dombasle, Fabrice Luchini, Clémentine Amouroux and François-Marie Banier.  It has also been released under the title: The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


The mayor of a provincial French town manages to get funding to build a media centre, in a picturesque location amidst green fields and old stone houses.  Needless-to-say the scheme meets with some fierce opposition from the locals, particularly a primary school teacher and his politically astute pre-teenage daughter.

A very topical film, Rohmer’s satire of some of the absurdities of French regional politics is very witty and surprisingly fresh.  The notion that a mayor can find it easier to obtain funding for a grotesque white elephant than for restoring the existing stone buildings has more than a ring of truth about it.

Arielle Dombasle’s portrayal of the mayor’s partner is the film’s winning card.  A confirmed city-phile who has never seen lettuces outside of a plastic wrapper in the supermarket, it is left to her to persuade the architect that it might be a good idea to try to blend the proposed concrete monstrosity into its surroundings.   Equally entertaining is the mixed, and largely unpredictable, responses of the local people to the venture.  Ultimately, only a young girl has the guts to tell the mayor what a damn fool idea he is pursuing – although of course, being just a little girl and not even eligible to vote, her words fall on deaf ears.

Can politician’s really be so stupid and blinkered?  Rohmer’s analysis is scathing and his conclusion an unequivocal oui.   Build a massive media complex in a community of a few dozen families?  The fact that the mere idea doesn’t immediately strike the film’s audience as being absurd suggest all to well that we have already become inured to the idiotic schemes of regional politicians.

With some Godard-esque direction and unpolished acting performances (looking as if the entire film was improvised), the film has a very effective documentary feel about it.  This techinque serves the film well, allowing Rohmer to make his political comments rather like a very capable ventiloquist:  the dialogue appears to come straight from the heads of the actors and not from the pages of some well-rehearsed script.

Whilst it suffers a little from a lack of structure, the film is nevertheless an entertaining satire of contemporary French poltics.  It is also a treat to see Fabrice Luchini (now a very popular actor in France) erupting in a number of spirited outbursts of fury and eloquence that no one could possibly have scripted.

© James Travers 2000

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