Cinema. "Valensole 1965": a UFO that remains stuck to the ground...
For his first feature-length fiction film, Dominique Filhol, who comes from the documentary genre ( Ovnis, une affaire d'États ), revisits a famous case in French ufology: the Maurice Masse affair, who, one summer morning in 1965, saw a UFO land in his lavender field.
In Provence, France, in 1965, in Valensole, a farmer, necessarily very earthy, sees a machine among the purple rows of his lavender fields which soon tears itself from the ground, leaving traces.
News of the strange apparition spreads quickly. Crowds invade the village, drawn by the mystery and the promise of a fragment of elsewhere. Under the suspicious eye of the police and journalists, the Valensole peasant finds himself, despite himself, the guardian of a secret he himself does not understand.
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Rumors and senseless theories are exchanged around him, paranoia grows. Every night, Maurice Masse scans the sky, fearing a new sign. His family withdraws, surrounded by curiosity, fear, and doubt. That morning, the horizon split for Maurice Masse, and nothing, ever, will be the same again.
A village chronicleEverything invited us to dive into mystery, to dare to try a genre film, even a fantasy, as this true story inspires a fertile imagination – after all, it's about UFOs and extraterrestrials. But Valensole 1965 , hopelessly grounded, falls into the realm of village chronicle.
Dominique Filhol accumulates café scenes where there is endless chatter, where there is rehashing, where gossip serves as dramatic tension. The police investigation, caricatured, is more amusing than worrying.
As for Maurice Masse's intimate drama, it is stifled by the overly emphatic performance of Matthias Ven Khade, who forces the distress to the point of grimace. Dominique Filhol locks himself into a heavy-handed "pagnolade," with a Provençal accent and a lot of wind.
Valensole 1965 , by Dominique Filhol, in theaters this Wednesday, July 9. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
Le Progres
