“Fleurs à parfum, retour en Grasse” (Scented Flowers, Return to Grasse) on France.tv: a woman’s fight to save the family farm

FRANCE.TV – ON DEMAND – DOCUMENTARY

It's a race against time that smells good. For a handful of weeks, equipped with a wicker basket attached to their belts, the pickers work at dusk or before dawn to harvest the Centifolia rose, the tuberose, or the grandiflorum jasmine. Their powerful fragrance is at its peak for a few hours a day, sometimes less. Afterward, it oxidizes and spoils. It's therefore necessary to act quickly but with a sure and delicate hand to harvest the ripe flowers. Then it's off to the processing site to extract the most aromatic absolutes (fragrances).

We are in Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes), in the Cannes hinterland, at the beginning of this century which saw the revival of its local crafts after decades of decline. There are moments in this documentary directed by Saléha Gherdane where the mind wanders, carried away by the power of flowers. The director films ancestral gestures up close, even down to the very grain of the air.

From picking to pruning, she paints the endearing portrait of a woman, Carole Biancalana, driven by an oath she fulfills. In 2004, after years spent away from the family farm, the thirty-year-old quit her office job and returned to take on a double challenge: to make the 4 hectares of the Domaine de Manon bloom again and convert them to organic farming. When Dior perfumes contacted her three years later, she understood that success was within reach. "I thought of my grandparents. I had promised them that I would keep this farm against all odds." she testifies, sitting among the wild grass.

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