It might seem ironic that Eric Rohmer’s The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque, his most resolutely localized film, also has perhaps the most wide-ranging dialogue of any of his films, the conversations at various points touching on the Amazon forests, the science of global warming, the impact of technology on work patterns, and the merits and characteristics of various ideological and political systems, to name but a few. But this speaks to the richness of Rohmer’s project, of illuminating how local issues become larger ones, with a corresponding difficulty in ever identifying the right thing to do, let alone getting it done. The mayor (Pascal Greggory) plans to build the mediatheque in the centre of the village (it’s amusing that such a project, where we’re told visitors will be able to watch films not available elsewhere, would long since have been rendered largely obsolete by streaming), along with an open-air theatre and swimming pool, creating local jobs and attracting more visitors, but with inevitable impacts on traffic volumes, centuries-old landscapes and so on, including the ancient tree referred to in the title (however, to focus primarily on the tree, as a magazine piece does in covering the dispute, simplifies the complexity). In the end, the plan falls apart for mostly bureaucratic reasons, and the movie ends on a song, straddling sincerity and satire, about taking the right steps for future generations. Romance is a secondary consideration here, and one might superficially dismiss the characters as being largely mouthpieces, but that would overlook Rohmer’s attentiveness to small but illuminating details, and his genuine immersion in the world depicted – we get to see the mayor’s garden in such detail that you might plausibly be able to sketch out the whole thing afterwards. And much as it may seem to end on a celebratory note, the film raises too many urgent issues not to leave a somewhat disquieting aftertaste.
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