»I’d like to tell you about an odd thing that happened.« This is the opening line of Camping du lac, as narrated by the main character Éléonore Saintagnan, who is played by the director herself. This ecological parable is about the pleasures of storytelling, about capitalist greed and our relationship with nature. Éléonore’s car breaks down somewhere in Brittany and she ends up stranded at a lakeside campsite. Legend has it that a giant fish has lived there since biblical times, and that it once fed Saint Corentin. With stoic curiosity and a parabolic microphone, Éléonore investigates the secret lives of the lake and the long-term campers. Her personal diary becomes a portrait of her new eccentric neighbours – the single mother with the chicken farm and the ageing cowboy from Ohio who records unrequited messages for his daughter every day. Julie Naas’ elliptical montage removes temporality from Camping du lac, turning days into weeks and months. Saintagnan and her amateur actors move wryly between truth and tradition, between the astonishing and the improbable. As the fish becomes a tourist attraction and the lake waters become increasingly sought-after, the dreamlike atmosphere begins to unravel. Playfully but unmistakably, the finale shows us how capitalism penetrates even the remotest corners of our existence and transforms stories into commodities.

Guest: Éléonore Saintagnan

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