We too often see the political thing, its personnel, and its facts, in the stories and images of the news media. The documentary “La Campagne de France”, a chronicle of a campaign for the municipal election of Preuilly-Sur-Claise, is the perfect counterpoint, with its follow-up of several candidates and a warm dive into everyday politics.
Politics, the real
Released at the cinema on March 9, 2022a month before the first round of a tense presidential election, The Campaign of France arrives at the right time. Its director, Sylvain Desclous, has already stood out with several short films and a feature film released in 2016, Seller, with Gilbert Melki and Pio Marmaï. For The Campaign of France returns to a place he knows well, the village of Indre-et-Loire Preuilly-Sur-Claisevillage of his grandparents, to follow three lists of municipal elections, one of which is led by a colorful duo.
A pretty painting of “small” politics (and a mockumentary?)
Somewhere Between Documentary Series Striptease and the cinema of Raymond Depardon, The Campaign of France thus plunges us into the political stakes of a small municipal election of 2020, letting ourselves be led by different candidates and trying to capture their characters, their expectations, their ideas. Stands out from an interesting gallery of portraits of an astonishing, wacky duo. They are Mathieu Barthélémy, a young engineer a little in the moon and a figure little known to the inhabitants of Preuilly, and his co-lister Guy Burnet, a “loudmouth” and divisive character from the village.
The quality of The Campaign of France is perhaps also its defect, which is to break free from all the codes of the documentary genre and to offer an elliptical narration, where it is no longer clear what the director’s objective is. Is it giving this real local campaign and its actors a broader and more symbolic human scope, which would resonate with a national election? Or on the contrary, would it be, in the manner of Stripteaseattempt to unfold the personalities encountered to the extreme?
There is thus indecision in The Campaign of France, charming but also disconcerting. Sometimes funny, often touching, and always authentic, Sylvain Desclous’ film succeeds in making political material other than a dramatic narrative or a thriller by showing it directly and frankly, without the jargon and the detours taken by political professionals, as well as by those who tell it.
