The joyous self-sufficiency of elderly Frenchwoman Suzanne Claudel is celebrated with generous style in Stéphane Manchematin and Serge Steyer’s absorbing documentary Suzanne From Day to Day, which follows her throughout a year – and across all its various seasons – as she goes through her daily rituals in her isolated family home on the edge of a forest in the Hautes-Vosges.
She looks back – often with a smile and a laugh – on more than nine decades of life, a warm-hearted and stoically independent woman who clings to her independence in the house where she was born and who still relishes all that life has to offer.
The film opens engagingly as she laughs while watching footage from the very film we are watching, with headphones on as she tries to swat a fly. She smiles, giggles and enjoys the memories, adding: “I feel so awkward to see myself in such a way…I look older than I thought.”
The filmmakers then cut back one year, with Suzanne in her house as the local postwoman pops by with an invoice and a newspaper…and to check if she is okay. She sits reading the paper, potters around her garden, knits and chats to the crew. “I’ve got a peaceful life. What more do you need?” she says. “If you feel at ease with yourself and if you’re satisfied with your lot…I do what I like, when I like. That’s what I call ‘peace of mind’.”
She settled back into her family home – where she was born in 1920 – after retirement. The house lacks all sense of comfort, neither mains electricity nor water supply help with cooking or heating, but nonetheless Suzanne wants for nothing – when the indoor temperature drops to single digits in winter, she simply takes a hot-water bottle to bed and adds another layer of blankets.
What electricity she has comes from a water turbine fitted by her grandparents in 1928. “In the storm of 2000 only our house had electricity,” she adds with a smile. Not all of her life revolves around the house, though. She drives – at great speed – into the local village to pop into the local boulangerie and waving at friends as she drives by; chats to close friends on her landline (engagingly twisting the long chord as she talks) and even pops by a music festival that happens to be staged quite close to her.
Often she is filmed with her face out of shot, with close-ups of a ball of wool, the telephone, lightbulbs or the fire, while astute use of sound accentuates the noise of animals in nearby woods, or of running water. A friend brings a loaf of bread and her freshly charged mobile phone; she manages to get her television to work to watch at Christmas and the same friend stops by to play cards. According to the changing seasons, Suzanne cultivates her vegetable garden, prepares her preserves, reads the newspaper, walks in the mountains and welcomes passing visitors.
The filmmaking duo of Manchematin and Steyer sensitively and beautifully record the everyday moments – from working the garden through to making a fire – and allow her life to appear content, busy and active, with never a word of complaint. It is a romantic vision of a solitary life and also a warmly pragmatic one, with Suzanne relishing her ordered existence. An enjoyable and insightful journey through the year in the life of an unflappable and warm-hearted woman.
France, 2023, 88mins
Dirs/Editors: Stéphane Manchematin, Serge Steyer
Production: Les Films de la pluie, Ana Films, Vosges Télévision
Producer: Sylvie Plunian, Milana ChristitchCinematography: Gautier Gumpper, Philippe Viladecas
Music: Muckrackers
With: Suzanne Claudel, Marie-Paule Gerard, Florent Vanson, Julien Felix, Ghislain Didier
