First, laughter, that of an old woman, not really all her teeth but her whole head, set with headphones in front of a computer: Suzanne Claudel watches “her” documentary, the one of which she is the heroine , for validation. His good humor is communicative and we find ourselves smiling. So begins Suzanne, day after day, an involuntary lesson in happiness by example, from a former mathematics teacher, born in 1930.
For a year, in 2021, “[s]es filmmakers”, as she calls them, indeed followed her on a daily basis, in her native farm in Rochesson in the Vosges, where she chose to live alone since her retirement. Her gray hair styled in a long braid, Suzanne goes out into the garden to enjoy the landscape in the early morning. It is filmed with respect, delicacy. Much care is taken with the framing, sometimes like a still life, sometimes like a Venetian painting.
The exterior of the house has a lot of charm, between the old stones, the vegetable garden and the hilly view; the interior is basic, not very clean, especially as the first shots stop at an ugly old stove. Then will appear the stone sink, the table, the wood stove, the television, the radio to listen to France Bleu Lorraine…
Seasonal variations
Dressed in a tartan skirt and a blue vest, Suzanne Claudel stands straight and enjoys “doing what [she wants] when [she wants]”. That is to say laughing on the phone, knitting, pulling carrots, which she cleans and covers with a newspaper, doing her crossword puzzles. She goes down to the cellar, brings up her preserves. In the evening, she looks at the sky then activates a crank for the light. “The electrix is ??110, supplied by a turbine my parents installed on the river,” below. Suzanne is not without electricity, she is self-sufficient in electricity. The same goes for the water, which certainly comes to it through a system of pipes and rickety jugs, but does come.
Added to this plot are seasonal variations: digging up snowy leeks, turning over the vegetable garden in light blue pants and a fuchsia pink top; go to the party being held in the nearby field. She also likes to play cards, drink a homemade guignolet with the young horticulturist who delivers plants to her, pose for a photographer, watch Christmas mass on the KTO channel. The phone is ringing ? He will wait until she has grated the turnips. There are priorities. Regularly, she takes her car, always impeccably dressed, to go to town to buy bread. She greets the inhabitants she knows.
“We create needs, but in the end we can do without them,” says Suzanne Claudel. Does she know Pierre Rhabi, figure of agroecology? Without knowing it, she embodies the “happy sobriety” he has always advocated. But no one asks him. Just as no questions are asked about her job, her family, her private life… We just know that out of her ten brothers and sisters, “there are nine left”, of which she is the eldest; and that her aunt would have seen her as a nun. “But I wasn’t submissive enough,” laughs Suzanne. Finally, it is not complicated to be happy.
