It’s hard to imagine someone putting down their backpack by chance in Preuilly-sur-Claise. Even less his camera. In fact, if Sylvain Desclous chose to stay in the town of Indre-et-Loire at the beginning of 2020 – 1,004 inhabitants at the last census – it is good because his family is from the area, where his grandparents are even buried. We must therefore understand the “Campaign” of the title in the double sense of the term, which refers both to the rural context, but also to the political since, as everywhere else in the country, we bring out the billboards announcing the upcoming municipal elections.
At the end of January, on similar soil, the Municipal by Thomas Paulot introduced an exogenous factor by inviting the actor Laurent Papot to run for a small town hall in the Ardennes, in order to kick the anthill once morest a background of civic momentum – very relative moreover. In comparison, the countryside of France does not seek to depart from its explicitly documentary trajectory, by choosing to track one of the three candidates who, for what we are provided with as elements of appreciation (the other two lists playing the utilities in the constructed narrative of the sort), seems to be the one most eager to shake things up. But the outsider Mathieu Barthélémy, “entrepreneurial researcher in the field of artificial intelligence”, may well present himself as “the son of the photographer”, his hardly charismatic profile struggles to print, especially since he has at his side a big hoary mouth from the left, as picturesque as it is cumbersome. Between imposed figures (elaboration of the program, “meeting” with a handful of voters…) and modestly cocky off-screen (visits to the hospitalized father) shrouded in loneliness, the said “Campaign” thus hobbles on a sincere air of social chronicle gently self-sufficient way Strip-tease light. Less the fanfare of the credits of the cult show, but the noise of the trucks which upsets the tranquility of the village (major concern of the Prulliaciens) in addition.
