The Field of Enchantment (La Clé des champs) (魔法池塘)

For 81 minutes this afternoon, I was sucked into and got completely immersed in another world. That is the world of red poppies, fluffy will of the wisps, daisies, water lizards, tadpoles, water skaters, snails, frogs, toads, eels, water snakes, carps, spiders, dragon flies, butterflies, swallows, owls  and all kinds of tiny insects and reptiles at an out of the way pond in a marsh a little distance from a small village somewhere in France. It's a world where initially one and then two lonely children would slip away quietly during their summer vacation, looking, smelling, feeling and being fascinated by all that they experience through their own eyes and their own senses, allowing their childlike minds to wander into the world of imagination, a private world all their own, establishing a silent bond, joined by their common entrancement by the wonders of the profusion of life on that tiny pond which no farmers would approach because a sheep once drowned there. In that world, they would exchange tiny but thoughtful gifts, dolls made of a blade of grass, a tiny stick and a poppy and tiny boats of leaves with another leaf stuck to a twig to serve as a sail and carrying a cargo of tiny pebbles made by the little girl and a jeweller's magnifying glass by the boy and where they would walk hand in hand under water amidst water weeds and gape at the wonders of nature. It's an enchanted world in which children and nature have become one. The story ends when we see the girl (Lindsey Hénocque) whom the boy names "Iris", leave the village in a bug like Citroen at the end of the summer vacation. But the memory of that summer is etched forever into and deep  within the psyche of the boy protagonist. (Simon Delagne,) whose name we don't even know. Throughout the film, they never spoke to each other. But what passed between them is beyond words. They merely hold hands, play and exchange looks. That is good enough for them. The film however is narrated by the boy in a voice off.

The film is  entitled "La Clé des champs" (literally "the key/secret of the fields"), in English "The field of enchantment"  written and directed by the directors of the former award winning  Nature film "Microcosmos": Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou, The photography by Laurent Charbonnier, Laurent Desmet , Claude Nuridsany  and Marie Pérennou is first class: clean, clear and poetic all at the same time. And the movement of the insects, fishes etc are perfectly matched by the music written specially for the film by Bruno Coulais. It's the type of film done with the kind of meticulous attention to details and spectacular photography and sound as only the French could do so. Like the two children, the memories of that 81 minutes will probably last me an entire life time.