Cousin Jules

Cousin Jules is a 1972 documentary effort to capture the memory of old rural France in celluloid form. It surprisingly manages to achieve excellence due to its legitimate age and authentic subject matter; rather than feeling pretentiously performative as a phony trip back in time - those flicks can get quite boring or just come across as empty.

The intense reality of a filmmaker in the early 1970s capturing the day-to-day routines of his relatives, an elderly farming couple, upholding an agrarian European culture that could potentially be any era in the early 1900s is fascinating and at times breathtaking.

I highly recommend this film, though I suggest it is to be saved for a quiet atmospheric mood. Le cousin Jules is a unique masterpiece that endures in a rare genre which even more rarely succeeds in captivating the intended audience.