With the most famous vineyards in the world, a long sandbar and famous surf spots, Perigord and its castles, the ‘bastides’ (medieval walled villages built on a grid pattern) and the Pyrenees's moutain, the region of Aquitaine offers a wide variety of landscapes and heritage that is irresistibly attractive to filmmakers.

From Patrice Chéreau's Queen Margot in 1994 to Guillaume Canet’s Jappeloup in 2013, many filmmakers went through Bordeaux, but few stayed there. Yves Caumon did it with The Bird, a story of loneliness and confinement shot in summer 2010 and splendidly interpreted by Sandrine Kiberlain. The director, born in the area, was educated in the city he chose for its atmosphere. “Bordeaux is a wildly mysterious city. I find it captivating, so romantic. Anything can happen in Bordeaux. It is also a cage that people do not leave. But the most beautiful thing in Bordeaux is the Garonne river”, he adds. Shot through the town, this movie is also infiltrated by nature, water, wind and vegetation. It has the mystery of a port city, a combination of exile sensation and the call of the sea, offering an ideal setting.

The city of Bordeaux and more broadly its region are considered a bourgeois land because of their history. It is this provincial bourgeoisie that François Mauriac, a native of Bordeaux, lampooned in his novels. The filmmaker Claude Chabrol, too, never ceased to denounce the provincial establishment hypocrisy. It is no wonder that, in 2003, his fiftieth movie, The Flower of Evil takes place in Bordeaux and its region. Chabrol addresses the theme of these wealthy families who marry each other and bury their secrets. «I already had filmed High Heels near Bordeaux ... I chose to come back because I wanted to tell a family story, and here, families who perpetuate themselves are not uncommon». Some scenes taking place in the second home of the family, are shot in the Arcachon basin.

Laetitia Colombani, born in Bordeaux shot here her first feature movie, a psychological thriller, released in 2002, starring Audrey Tautou and Samuel Le Bihan, in which, once more, appearances are deceptive, as is the city that hides its secrets behind a normal life. «The province and particulary Bordeaux are perceptible in the image of He Loves Me ... He Loves Me Not» she said. 

In Bordeaux vineyards, problems of family succession and respect for wine traditions are at the heart of many television miniseries. You Will Be My Son by Gilles Legrand, released in 2011, uses the same themes: the attachment to the land, the clash between tradition and modernity, and the generational conflict. This film was shot in the vineyards of Saint-Emilion classified Intangible Heritage of UNESCO, mainly in the castle, vineyards and cellars of Clos Fourtet. This is an authentic immersion into the work of the vine that combines aesthetics and realism – the cellar master of the place even inherits the role of a vineyard worker. The area attracted the director because of its view over the village steeple and for the vineyards growing up to the door of the castle. The unbroken domain walls reinforce the intimate nature of the film and the behind-closed-doors drama of this family whose vineyard and wine are rightfully true characters.

To film Camping 2, Fabien Onteniente is back in 2010 in Arcachon and on the Pyla dune. These places are also at the heart of Guillaume Canet’s third movie, Little White Lies shot in late summer of 2009. Parisian friends get together at a holiday home in Cap-Ferret belonging to Max (François Cluzet). Swimming, surfing, water skiing, sea drives, lazing in the house under pines, running on the beach –  "the joys of the seaside " as stated by Antoine (Laurent Lafitte) –  we are in a tourist brochure. The local touch is provided : the priest is a true priest and Jean-Louis, a local friend of the buddies group is played by a real oyster farmer! He is the one who lives in this sublime environment and the faithfull friend. He is the opposite of the selfishness and lies that makes up the Parisian group, whose lives, in the first sequence of the movie, symbolically takes place in a nightclub, a place for frivolity. Here we see an opposition somewhat like night and daylight. Camping and Little White Lies also mark an opposition themselves. They bring to light the two faces of Arcachon, the popular side and the middle-class side.

Although d'Artagnan was born in Gascony, it is rather in the former neighboring province of Guyenne that filmmakers often set their cameras to shoot the numerous Alexandre Dumas adaptations. Dordogne castles are indeed ideal settings for historical movies. Released in 2007, Jacquou le Croquant by Laurent Boutonnat, is adapted from a novel by Eugène Le Roy made famous in 1969 by a television series. It relates the revolt of a young Périgourdin peasant during the 19th century. For this movie with polished photography, the director went to the Carpathians to find natural settings according to his own view of the Dordogne countryside two hundred years ago, which are made up of large areas with no trace of civilization and not a great deal of restored hovels. The bulk of the movie is shot in Romania, but rural or village sequences are filmed in Dordogne towns: Montignac, Terrasson-Lavilledieu, Besse, Beynac, Cazenac, and especially Sarlat. Also filmed are the feudal mansions of Hautefort and Saint-Geniès, the one in L’Herm that the hero sets on fire and those of Biron and Beynac. We find these last two in many historical movies, including D'Artagnan's Daughter (Revenge of the Musketeers) by Bertrand Tavernier in 1994, Les Visiteurs (The Visitors) by Jean-Marie Poire in 1993 and 1998, and Joan of Arc by Luc Besson in 1999. Brotherhood of the Wolf, by Christophe Gans, released in 2001, the story of which takes place in Lozère, is actually filmed in Hautes-Pyrénées, but Dordogne still prevails for its medieval architecture with Jumilhac and Puyguilhem castles and the town of Sarlat. This town of less than ten thousand inhabitants welcomed over twenty feature films and a dozen TV films or television series. We can bet that, beyond the medieval setting, filmmakers and their teams also enjoy the local cuisine and Bordeaux wines!

To be continued … Episode 3 : The region of Corsica