The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque (1993) User Reviews

This time it's politics

[valadas · 7/10 · 22 October 2013]

This time Eric Rohmer turned to politics. We got here the problem of a not too orthodox socialist mayor of a small town who wants to build there a recreative-cultural center somewhat megalomaniac to which his main adversary the local teacher, is firmly opposed in the name of the rural environment. This leads us through discussions and lively dialogues and journalist interviews of several people to the vexed confrontation town-countryside and rurality-urbanization everything treated with the simplicity and naturalness to which Rohmer has accustomed us to when he deals with important human or social problems. Besides that it's also a movie where old questions are debated such as political partisanship at the local level with its not always clear and limpid paths. A curious movie, simultaneously serious and amusing.

Well done

[LeRoyMarko · 7/10 · 17 April 2001]

Not so bad french film about a little town where politicians are pulling to get a new «médiathèque» (some kind of media center) for the locality. The cinematography is beautiful and the acting is very good. Interesting to see how politics sometimes work.

Out of 100, I gave it 76.

At once localized and wide-ranging

[philosopherjack · 18 February 2022]

It might seem ironic that Eric Rohmer's The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque, his most resolutely localized film, also has perhaps the most wide-ranging dialogue of any of his films, the conversations at various points touching on the Amazon forests, the science of global warming, the impact of technology on work patterns, and the merits and characteristics of various ideological and political systems, to name but a few. But this speaks to the richness of Rohmer's project, of illuminating how local issues become larger ones, with a corresponding difficulty in ever identifying the right thing to do, let alone getting it done. The mayor (Pascal Greggory) plans to build the mediatheque in the centre of the village (it's amusing that such a project, where we're told visitors will be able to watch films not available elsewhere, would long since have been rendered largely obsolete by streaming), along with an open-air theatre and swimming pool, creating local jobs and attracting more visitors, but with inevitable impacts on traffic volumes, centuries-old landscapes and so on, including the ancient tree referred to in the title (however, to focus primarily on the tree, as a magazine piece does in covering the dispute, simplifies the complexity). In the end, the plan falls apart for mostly bureaucratic reasons, and the movie ends on a song, straddling sincerity and satire, about taking the right steps for future generations. Romance is a secondary consideration here, and one might superficially dismiss the characters as being largely mouthpieces, but that would overlook Rohmer's attentiveness to small but illuminating details, and his genuine immersion in the world depicted - we get to see the mayor's garden in such detail that you might plausibly be able to sketch out the whole thing afterwards. And much as it may seem to end on a celebratory note, the film raises too many urgent issues not to leave a somewhat disquieting aftertaste.

Totally one dimensional

[jromanbaker · 2/10 · 24 May 2021]

I do not hide the fact that I love Eric Rohmer's films but not all. Arielle Dombasle, Pascal Greggory and Fabrice Luchini try to give it life, but the documentary/fiction direction turns them into one dimensional puppets, and despite the endless discussions about the Right, the Left and the Greens in French politics (interesting in itself) swamps any character development. I realised I was watching a poor film with an early scene in the film where Dombasle gets excited by sheep, cows and flowers and she appears as a sort of Marie Antoinette figure longing for her beloved Paris and claiming that it is her ' circle ' there that counts. She plays this ludicrous scene with Pascal Greggory as her lover and also Mayor of the rural village with a grand Manor in the background. I felt so cross about this that I wanted to grind her (fictional) face in the deprived suburbs of her beloved Paris. I kind of switched off and wondered why this film had played in a Paris cinema for one whole year. For me the essential Rohmer is in his observation of changing moods, and psychological perceptions in his three series. ' Moral Tales ', ' Comedies and Proverbs ' and the flawed but still good ' Tales of Four Seasons,' but outside this body of work his films are often very dull indeed. I give it a 2 for his endlessly interesting camera movements and even in this disaster he is clearly a great, great director.