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Modern Life

Name: Modern Life
Director: Raymond Depardon
Released: 2008
Duration: 88 min

Representation Score

3.3/10

Limited

2008

Not Rated

Director

Raymond Depardon

Runtime

88 minutes

Average Rating

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New Showbiz Analysis

Raymond Depardon’s documentary emphasizes ethnographic accuracy and observational authenticity. By capturing farmers in the French highlands over a decade, the film documents a historically homogeneous demographic. It does not aim to disrupt traditional structures or introduce diverse identities. Instead, it preserves the dignity of a vanishing way of life. The film’s value lies in its unfiltered look at communal structures facing modernity. It avoids the spectacle of identity politics to focus on the cyclical rhythms of rural existence.

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Category Breakdown

Does Modern Life have LGBTQ+ representation?

Minimal

The film focuses on a rural French community and does not include any LGBTQ+ characters or stories about non-cisgender identities. It centers on the agricultural lifestyle of the region.

How does Modern Life portray gender?

Fair

The documentary presents a nuanced look at labor division in the French highlands, where traditional roles in agriculture and domestic life prevail.

How racially and ethnically diverse is Modern Life?

Minimal

The cast is primarily made up of people from a similar ethnic background, reflecting the demographics of the isolated mountain regions in France.

How does Modern Life represent religion and culture?

Fair

The film offers a contemplative perspective on traditional Western institutions. It highlights the dignity of manual labor and local customs as a counterpoint to consumerist culture.

Does Modern Life include disability representation?

Limited

While the film touches on the physical demands of labor and the aging process, it does not focus on specific disabilities or neurodivergence as key themes.

Present on Screen

Provides an authentic, unfiltered look at the realities of rural agricultural life.
Offers a reflective critique of globalized industrial systems through a local lens.
Captures the dignity of manual labor and the passage of time with great serenity.

Limited or Absent

Lacks representation of LGBTQ+ identities or stories about non-cisgender genders.
Maintains traditional gender roles without challenging or deconstructing them.
Does not engage with neurodivergence or specific disabilities as central narrative elements.

Official Synopsis

For ten years, Raymond Depardon has followed the lives of farmer living in the mountain ranges. He allows us to enter their farms with astounding naturalness. This moving film speaks, with great serenity, of our roots and of the future of the people who work on the land. This the last part of Depardon's triptych "Profils paysans" about what it is like to be a farmer today in an isolated highland area in France. "La vie moderne" examines what has become of the persons he has followed for ten years, while featuring younger people who try to farm or raise cattle or poultry, come hell or high water.

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