Shepherds

It's the story of a Quebecois man, Mathyas (Félix-Antoine Duval), who leaves his public relations job to become a shepherd in Provence, France. He takes on a position and has some bad experiences and some exhilarating experiences. He meets a young French woman, Elise (Solène Rigot), who partners with him to become a shepherdess. The film is partly based on Mathyas Lefebure's experiences related in a 2006 novel.

"Bergers" contains some stunning cinematography, with masses of sheep moving almost like a river and the French Alps where the sheep summer. Duval and Rigot are attractive as young spirits seeking to escape hum-drum urban life. Bruno Raffaelli and Michel Benizri portray good villains, and Guilaine Londez and David Ayala are satisfactory as sympathetic partners. The storyline contains gaps--especially about Mathyas's learning process and how he became competent so quickly. Some subtexts don't get developed, e.g., the actual reasons for Mathyas's falling out with Ahmed. But the cinematography makes it worthwhile.

From what I understand, this one is based on a true story, which was aptly written down by the main character, and a living shepherd, Mathyas and now put into screen for everyone to see and get inspired.

In a nutshell, Mathyas, a guy in his mid or late twenties, has enough of his office job in Quebec, Canada so he decides to quit on the spur of the moment and ends up in Aix-en-Provence, France greedily searching for "vie pastorale" as opposed to his office deadline life, that we, interestingly, know nothing about. He bumps into a few books about shepherds and decides he wants to become one. At the outset, it looks like a romanticized outlook on this seemingly 'simple' job but his office job has probably taught him to be goal oriented so he won't give up that easily.

I see two lines in this story: a personal one and a social one. The social has to do with this new tendency of high rank white collars quitting their stressful jobs as a protest against capitalism and a burning desire to be closer to nature: this trend can't be left unnoticed and is wonderfully portrayed here. The personal story is the one of starting from scratch and not giving up even when jeered at and offered the worst conditions. This personal one teaches us perseverance as well as accepting our mistakes and learning from them. And of course, the scenery is amazing so all in all it makes it a really worthwhile movie.