Roxane (2019)

Directed by: Melanie Auffret | 85 minutes | comedy | Actors: Guillaume de Tonquédec, Léa Drucker, Lionel Abelanski, Kate Duchêne, Roxane, Liliane Rovère, Michel Jonasz, Jean-Yves Lafesse, Baptiste Perais, Sacha Bejaoui, Philippine Martinot

In the week that Dutch farmers flocked en masse to the Malieveld in The Hague to protest against the cabinet’s proposal to halve livestock numbers because of nitrogen emissions, the French film ‘Roxane’ will be released in cinemas. A lucky coincidence, because the subject of the film – the small farms lose out to a wealthy farmer – feels more topical than ever.

Raymond Leroux is a poultry farmer in Brittany, just like his brother-in-law and many of his neighbors. Because his wife Anne-Marie has a job at a bank, the family is just getting by, but his wife urges him just before the meeting with the cooperative to ask for 2 cents more per egg. However, being together is very different from what the sympathetic farmer thought. Instead of earning more, the cooperative stops buying eggs from the smaller, organic chicken farmers altogether. Three more months and they will only focus on one customer from now on.

That same evening brother-in-law Poupou makes a suicide attempt, which fortunately fails. Sadly, this plot element isn’t as fictional as you’d hope it is. In France, the suicide rate is higher among farmers than elsewhere. Quite logical when you consider that farmers have been struggling for years. Constantly changing rules, always those financial worries, the ever-growing fear of losing your company and with it your raison d’être at the same time.

Yet ‘Roxane’ is above all a light-hearted feel-good film. Given the idea by his aunt Simone, Raymond comes up with the idea of ​​making YouTube videos of him and his chicken Roxane (named after Cyrano de Bergerac’s niece, a play that Raymond has been in love with for years). He hopes to save his company by generating a lot of views. But that is not easy, especially not because most of his family does not take him seriously. Only his student daughter thinks he should persevere. He receives lessons in French literature, articulation and drama from the first hostile English neighbor and perseveres. And it works: with his interpretations of French plays, Roxane and he get more visitors. But the expected rescue is not forthcoming.

‘Roxane’ tells a sympathetic story, without having too much bond with the characters or being surprised. Raymond and Anne-Marie are a charming couple, but their marital problems don’t worry you for a moment. Both the chickens and the French speaking neighbor with a fat English accent are funny and it is always nice to imagine yourself in the French countryside. The film is never boring to watch and the short running time makes the time fly by. But although the film can also be seen as an ode to the French classics, ‘Roxane’ will never be able to count on it.