Profils Paysans: L'Approche plot
With an immovable camera, Raymond Depardon filmed a number of French farmers in their stables and at the kitchen table. He has known some of them for years, but he was always barred from their homes by the shy farmers. Now they are all 'retired', but they cannot say goodbye to farming life, if only because fewer and fewer young farmers are eager to take over their farming business. The proverbial simplicity of peasant life is therefore disproved by Depardon, who records the troubles of a number of farmers in sober scenes and provides the images with facts in a voice-over. An 85-year-old farmer from Les Cévennes tries to do business with her distant neighbor in the Occidental dialect, and an old farmer from Haute-Loire is still negotiating the price of the cows herself.