Who takes the time to land to observe a meadow or a clearing? So close and accessible that we tend to pass by without stopping. However, pastures are home to more than 3,000 animal and plant species. Scheduled as part of the cycle “A natural summer in France”, the new Friday, August 11 offers to take this step aside and have fun.

Designed not as an animal documentary on a “high place of biodiversity”, it thus takes the viewer on a zen and poetic journey, up to deer, rabbits, poppies, gentians and blue argus (butterflies ). Not without ulterior motive.

Deforestation in France began in the Middle Ages, giving rise to today’s forest clearings and their cohorts of animals: foxes, fawns, birds of all kinds… so many species whose daily life we ??will discover, always on on the alert, over the seasons. Based on an ordinary scenario – the beauty of the fauna and flora, the dangers that threaten them, modern agriculture that destroys them – the staging breathes a dose of magic.

Crested lapwings just hatched are filmed in extreme close-up; the near-static flight of a skylark is caught in slow motion; a still camera captures the birth of two fawns; before switching to wild orchids or meadow salsify. The rhythm of the sequences and the short sentences make it possible to feel the intertwining of the roles of each in this balance.

Nature’s Tricks

In a soft voice, Maïa Guéritte (in the commentary of the French version) underlines some tricks of nature. The ashen coulis thus has its own way of protecting its eggs, laid on the ground, like those of the crested lapwing. The large bombyle is able to arm its shot before propelling an egg in flight into a hole in an earthen wall. As for the meadow sage, it offers nectar to its pollinator in thanks.

The upbringing of the fawns is equally remarkable: “During the first months of their life, they stay where their mother leaves them, until she comes back to pick them up,” explains Maïa Guéritte. But, while the viewer is totally under the spell, when he least expects it, she continues: “If the reaper continues its work, the outcome will be fatal” for this fawn, which we saw to be born and which remains wisely, by atavism, huddled in the middle of the tall grass.

However, the mower does not only have bad sides. And while it points out that “millions of acres of grassland have been uprooted in favor of more lucrative crops”, the film is never aggressive, including towards “struggling farmers”. He points out, on the other hand, the quest for profits and the political choices, on a European scale. But even the tractor plowing is filmed with poetry, before winter. A softness of a beautiful efficiency.