THE STORY – In northern France, Gabin, the youngest of the Jourdel family, finds himself destined to take over his father’s butcher shop. Тorn between family loyalty and a desire to break free, his dreams lie elsewhere: to train a contest cow, to become a dog breeder, and to save his mother’s farm from financial ruin. Spanning a decade, “Gabin” immerses us in this young boy’s world, following his journey from the age of 8 to 18.
THE CAST – Gabin Jourdel, Patricia Jourdel, Dominique Jourdel, Lilou Duflos & Catherine Ranson
THE TEAM – Maxence Voiseaux (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 105 Minutes
Premiering in the Quinzaine des Cineastes section of the 79th Cannes Film Festival, this engaging documentary is the feature debut of writer-director Maxence Voiseux. Filmed over ten years, it echoes Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood,” while Voiseux’s unique narrative approach treads an intriguing line between fiction and documentary.
Shot in northern France, the film centers on Gabin, the youngest member of the Jourdel family, whose father, Dominique, is a butcher, and whose mother, Patricia, is a farmer. Over the course of ten years, between the ages of eight and eighteen, Gabin struggles with issues of family loyalty – most notably, his father wants him to eventually take over the butcher’s shop. Still, Gabin’s interest lies elsewhere, as he becomes drawn to the idea of training sheep dogs.
Throughout the film, various other aspects of Gabin’s life come into play, from his friendship with female classmate Lilou (Lilou Deflos) to his sessions with personal tutor Catherine (Catherine Ranson), which feel more like therapy, to his eventual diagnosis of ADHD, which gives him some long-awaited clarity as to his difficulties with concentration. Similarly, Gabin’s relationship with his parents is constantly in the background. Evidently, Dominique is stern and somewhat cold, perhaps struggling to express his emotions, while Patricia has a warmth and lightness with her son that is extremely charming.
Though technically a documentary, Voiseux’s narrative style effectively makes the film feel like a narrative feature, particularly in terms of the audience experience. As he explained in a Q&A session after the film, Voiseux achieved this feeling by working closely with his subjects over ten years and letting conversations flow naturally within the context of a scene.
To put that in context within the film, if, for example, Gabin and Lilou were going to spend the day at the beach together, Voiseux would accompany them and give them subjects to talk about, rather than giving them an actual script. That approach leads to a fascinating blurring of the lines between fiction and fly-on-the-wall filmmaking. Still, there’s no denying that Voiseux’s method produces some wonderful results, most notably in a sequence where Gabin asks Lilou (on whom he obviously has a huge crush) if there are any boys at school she likes and doesn’t receive the answer he was obviously hoping for.
The opening of the film uses footage of eight-year-old Gabin that Voiseux originally shot for a short film focused on the wider Jourdel family, including Gabin’s grandfather. In addition to being charming (especially the way Gabin talks to the cows – “You’re bigger than me, but you’re not the boss”), those sequences set the scene for the film in general, because young Gabin already knows that he doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps, effectively preferring to work with live animals rather than dead ones.
As with Linklater’s “Boyhood,” it is fascinating to see the film’s central subject aging before our eyes. Accordingly, Gabin goes through several different looks and haircuts throughout the film, some of which are less than flattering. At one point, he gets a full buzzcut, in stark contrast to his wavy brown locks in the rest of the film, which highlights how the film jumps across different time periods.
It’s fair to say that Voiseux’s narrative approach doesn’t always pay off. In fact, in two specific cases, the results are quite frustrating. Firstly, although the audience is invested in the relationship/possible romance between Gabin and Lilou, there’s no satisfying resolution to their story. And secondly, an oblique reference is made quite late in the film to the effect that Gabin’s personal tutor, Catherine, no longer works with the family due to personal reasons, and her overly familiar behavior with Gabin in an earlier scene is suddenly cast in a different light, though without any accompanying clarification.
That said, there are a number of lovely sequences that make this worth seeing. Highlights include: a very funny scene with Gabin (around 18) and Patricia, where he is teasing her about him being a “mummy’s boy” and wanting to live with her forever and a beautifully simple sequence of Gabin doing livestock care training, where he has to listen to a cow’s heartbeat and a beatific expression comes over his face in a close-up shot as the heartbeat comes onto the soundtrack, contrasted with three previous close-ups of other students doing the same thing, but with less success.
Similarly, the film delivers powerful emotional moments that further testify to Voiseux’s closeness with the family. One scene in particular is devastating, when Patricia relates the story of Gabin’s birth and is visibly overcome with emotion as she recalls her last moments with her mother-in-law. In addition, Voiseux also has a great eye for framing and creating arresting images, in collaboration with cinematographers François Chambe and Martin Roux. Watch out for a lovely “spot the dog” shot, of a single dog in a huge flock of sheep.
In short, this is an emotionally engaging documentary that plays like an intimate independent drama thanks to Voiseux’s singular style of filmmaking. After the completion of this ten-year project, it will be fascinating to see what he does next.
