France, 1915. Hortense (Nathalie Baye) is trying to keep the family farm going as her sons fight in The Great War. “I stopped reading the papers,” she tells them in a letter. “The war scares me and it pains me to think of you.”
The community’s lack of young men also weighs on Hortense’s mind as she looks for a new farm hand. She ends up having to hire Francine (Iris Bry), a young maid, to work in the fields. “Can you drive cattle?” Hortense asks dubiously in the film’s trailer. “Yes. It doesn’t scare me,” Francine says.
With Francine’s help, it’s not long before the farm is back to running smoothly. “She’s a hard worker,” Hortense observes. “As good as any man.”
However, this new, matriarchal way of life won’t remain peaceful for long. As the tailer hints, Hortense and Francine’s lives are thrown into disarray when the men return on leave.
“The Guardians” opens May 4. Marie-Julie Maille and Frédérique Moreau wrote the script with director Xavier Beauvois (“Of Gods and Men”).
