In the heart of the Morvan region, Nico, the last vet in the area, struggles to save his patients, his clinic, and his family. When Michel, his partner and mentor, announces his retirement, Nico knows that the hard part is yet to come. “Don’t worry, I’ve found the next generation. Except that … the next generation is Alexandra, a 24-hour graduate, brilliant, misanthropic, and not at all willing to return to bury herself in the village of her childhood. Will Nico manage to make her stay?
No better synopsis to lend the flank to critics: “Lack of originality, predictable narrative scheme …”: we see them arriving at 15 kms!
Ok ! But I loved it! The brilliant game of Noémie Schmidt and Clovis Cornillac, the more offbeat of Michel Jonasz, the music of Matei Bratescot … And then this magnificent story which tells us about different values from those which we are given at length of advertising spots, like poor geese waiting for Christmas …
But there ! Here and there, women and men choose to take on difficult professions because they find meaning in them. Far from graduates of business schools to whom large companies propose to eat the Office 365 suite all day long in bonuses bullshit jobs …
Some choose to invest in care, sustainable food, education, cultural mediation… all these professions that our society has decided to sacrifice on the altar of profitability. Others – or the same ones – educate their children in benevolence, in wonderment, rather than in the society of “each for himself”…
So this film is not only a film about the difficulties of campaign vetoes. He is not an avatar of Gauvain Sers’ lovely song, “Les oubliés“. This film tells us more. He tells us to look at all that we have lost and that we urgently need to regain: control of time, place, roots, friendship, benevolence.
Predictable narrative pattern? My dear friends, go see it!
Iconography: Noémie Schmidt in the film “Les Vétos”, French dramatic comedy by Julie Manoukian, with Clovis Cornillac, Noémie Schmidt, Carole Franck, Juliane Lepoureau, Matthieu Sampeur, Michel Jonasz, 2019
After working as an international banker for emerging countries, Laurent Lascols became global head of country risk / sovereign risk (from 2008 to 2013) then global director of public affairs (from 2014 to 2019) for Societe Generale. In 2021, he founded Aristote, an advisory firm and training organization dedicated to environmental economics, sustainable finance and impact finance.