UNDER THE PINES / Landes

US Premiere • Historical drama • France, Belgium, 2013

DCP • 2.35 • Dolby 5.1 • Color • 95 min

 

Directed by: François-Xavier Vives

Written by: Camille Fontaine, Emmanuel Roy, François-Xavier Vives

Cinematography: Emmanuel Soyer

Film Editing: Isabelle Poudevigne

Original Score: Franck Lebon

Produced by: Florence Borelly (Sésame Films), Alain Berliner (Wfe)

Cast: Marie Gillain (Liéna Duprat), Jalil Lespert (Txomin Iban), Miou-Miou (Madeleine), Steve Driesen (Cachan), Bernard Blancan (Darrouy), Rosalia Cuevas (Mme Hector), Swan Mirabeau (Suzanne)

International Sales: Cinexport

 

Set in the towering forests of Landes in the aftermath of WWI, when sweeping social changes threatened the economic feudalism that had enriched landowners for generations. Liéna, a recently widowed heiress, takes control of the family fortune and decides to fulfill her deceased husband’s ambition of bringing electricity to the entire region. Partly because she is a woman, most regard her as a deluded fool, and she soon finds herself set upon on all fronts: a family desperately clinging to the old ways, labor hell-bent on getting their fair share of the pie, and her burgeoning, forbidden love affair with the plantation foreman. Even the forests which have so long been the source of her family’s wealth now seem to be closing in on her, but Liéna, in a stylish performance by Marie Gillain following a two-year absence from film, is determined to prove that she is anything but deluded, and she is certainly nobody’s fool.

 

It’s no coincidence that writer/director François-Xavier Vives chose the Department of Landes as the setting for his first feature film.  Having grown up in the woods and heaths of the region, they are an indelible part of his inspiration. Vives won acclaim for his first film, 1860 sur l'extrême horizon (1995), a documentary tracing the footsteps of Landes photographer and amateur sociologist Félix Arnaudin, who documented the local shepherd culture that was dying out at the end of the 19^th century. The character of Liéna is based on the sister of Vives’ great-grandmother, a headstrong family ancestor who somehow succeeded in a male-dominated society.

 

“Landes (Under the Pines) is the kind of film that French cinema has traditionally excelled in, an elegantly crafted period drama that authentically evokes a period of French history.”

- James Traverse FILMSDEFRANCE