La Vie comme elle va

Jean-Henri Meunier has filmed the life of a few inhabitants of Najac, a small village in Aveyron in the southwest of France, ever since he fled Paris six years ago. He captures his fellow-villagers, composing a gallery of tender and cordial portraits of his neighbours. Even if the majority of them are old, as is people’s fate in these corners of France, they breathe the pleasure of living, without enjoying other luxuries. And so we meet a retired man who has decided to take things easy, a poet of mechanical engineering, a hundred-year-old lady who sings the International, a surrealistic station manager and a farmer who keeps on travelling. La vie comme elle va is a poetic country tale, both free and un-co-ordinated, woven with little nothings and captured with a right tone. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)