Conservative in storyline and visual style, Christian Carion's debut is nevertheless an ambitious attempt to tackle a range of themes without lamenting or lecturing, as Mathilde Seigner's thirtysomething Parisienne reaches an uneasy understanding with Michel Serrault's curmudgeonly farmer amidst the ruins of regional, generational and sexual prejudices.
Certainly, there's an unashamedly melodramatic aspect to the widowed Serrault's decision to advise the self-contained novice who purchased his rundown farm.
It may occasionally romanticise the seasonal shifts in the Rhein-Alp landscape, but its keen commercial eye suggests there is another way of considering the crisis in European agriculture than the crud-encrusted authenticity of Andrew Kotting's This Filthy Earth.