Happiness Is in the Field

Francis runs a factory making bathroom fittings in Paris. The business is failing, the tax inspectors are at the door, his wife and daughter shout at him, and he has had enough. He watches a programme on television: a man who disappeared twenty eight years ago is being sought and the photograph on screen resembles him. The missing man's wife appeals for him to come home. Francis gets in the car, drives south and presents himself as that man. She accepts him. He now lives on a goose farm. Étienne Chatiliez directs. Michel Serrault plays Francis and Sabine Azéma plays the woman in the south, with Eddy Mitchell as a neighbour. The idea is not changing identity but whether a life can be left. Francis lies and the film does not punish him for it. The narrative sets two lives against each other: the factory, the debt and the family pressure in Paris, and the farm, the food and the quiet in the south. Étienne Chatiliez is known for comedies satirising the French middle class and this is among his best known. Michel Serrault plays the part without exaggeration; the man's escape is not comic but desperate. The goose farm in the Gers and the food culture are given in detail, and the visual pleasure of the film comes from there. Who it is for: viewers who like French comedy and narratives of middle aged escape. Who it is not for: the humour is measured, the pace is slow, and the narrative leaves the moral question open.