Michael Apted's Up series, in which he's checked in on the growth and development of 14 children every seven years, is one of the major documentary achievements of all time. But through no fault of Apted's, the experiment hit a valley at 35 Up: His subjects, once volatile and unformed, had mostly settled into the comfortable routines of adulthood, and the drama had evaporated from their lives. The same problem afflicts Back To Normandy, the latest effort from gifted French documentarian Nicolas Philibert, who found innovative ways to access the hearing-impaired in 1992's In The Land Of The Deaf, and who followed a year in the life of provincial schoolchildren in the charming 2003 film To Be And To Have. Conceptually, Back To Normandy is every bit as brilliant as his other work, reflecting on an experience Philibert had three decades earlier in a way that gently evokes regional, cinematic, and personal history. As with 35 Up, however, the footage just doesn't cooperate.
Back in 1976, Philibert served as an assistant director on Réne Allio's true-crime tale I Pierre Rivière, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, And My Brother; it was based on Michel Foucault's book, about the extraordinary jailhouse confession of a Norman peasant who killed his family members with a billhook in 1835. Allio returned to the scene of the crime, shooting very close to the real location in Normandy, and casting farmers and other non-actors in the major roles. At the time, Philibert was tasked with finding locals to fill the parts, and for Return To Normandy, he tracks them down again to see how it changed their lives.
Here's the problem: Their lives didn't change much. Most of them fondly remember Allio's crew sweeping into the area and offering them a singular experience, but when the camera were gone, life pretty much returned to normal. Even Philibert's meeting with the eccentric, elusive actor who played Rivière is anticlimactic. What grace notes remain are owed to Philibert's characteristically fine evocation of rural life and his obvious affection for the families and colorful characters he encountered so many years ago. (Those wary about seeing where their delicious bacon comes from are hereby forewarned, however.) What's missing is the sense of a pulse.
Key features: None.