L’arbre, le maire et la médiathèque is set in a village in the Vendée, just under Brittany, that is portrayed very concretely, virtually in a documentary way, by Rohmer. He shot the film on 16mm and entirely on location, with a small crew, a kind of family of trusted film friends. Rohmer wanted to scale down to the size of the village and avoid the invasion effect of many professional film crews.The film was released in France just as inconspicuously. Rohmer avoided the usual launch at a major festival with the circus of press and released the film without a press preview in a small cinema in Paris, where it ran for months with striking success.You could describe L’arbre as a political film; a mild mocking of the all-too-ambitious Paris politicians who impose their idea of ‘progress’ on the countryside. The village has such a young politician as mayor and he dreams of building a cultural centre for his sleepy little village. He even manages to obtain the necessary finance for the expensive project. Not¡hing would appear to stand in the way of realising it. A beautiful old tree which would have to make way for the centre however evokes unexpected feelings and reactions which the mayor cannot restrain.
