French Provincial

Director André Téchiné brings his usual obsessions including a preoccupation with the fortunes of the bourgeoisie to this episodic drama which serves as a thinlyveiled portrait of Frances economic peaks and valleys from the 1930s through the 1970s Jeanne Moreau stars as Berthe Pedret a simple laundry woman who marries Hector Michael Auclair son of a wealthy upper class Spanish immigrant family that owns a successful farm machinery factory Through a series of vignettes Techine depicts the passage of years during which the ambitious working class woman blooms through several bold moves such as negotiating a workers strike settlement and using her alliance with the wartime French Resistance movement to increase the enterprises prestige