Biquefarre

The title of Georges Rouquier’s final film is the name of a small farm in Aveyron, France and the narrative revolves around the changing nature of farming life there. Within this setting a middle-aged farmer decides to sell up and move to Toulouse, a decision that leads to two neighbours competing to buy, with an array of underhanded methods undertaken to secure the deal. The background to these shenanigans is the daily life and routine of farm life, highlighting the escalating mechanisation, automation of practice and procedures and difficulties inherent within the economics of land ownership, expensive machinery and unstable returns. This naturalistic film works as a companion piece to “Farrebique” (1945); in fact it can almost be read as a sequel to Rouquier’s earlier work in which the same family were carefully considering the introduction of electricity. Using a cast of non-professional actors, and engaging a documentary feel, Rouquier successfully evokes the milieu of rural life, presenting it here in a non-idealised manner, an aesthetic contrast to the evocative bucolic mise-en-scene of “Farrebique”. Cast includes Henri Rouquier, Maria Rouquier, Roger Malet, Marius Benaben and Helene Benaben.