In modern France, as in centuries past, village life revolves around the school, post office, shops and railway station, the centres where people meet to exchange news and to gossip. This is a visual distillation of village life in France today, where the traditions live on in the cafe that doubles as a charcuterie or in the small hotel (awarded no stars in the guide books) that provides for wedding receptions. We see the young adults who keep the village way of life viable and thriving. The text allows them to speak to use in their own words: the boulangere, who serves her many customers from a modern mobile bakery, the gendarme, who keeps a photograph of his wife and children inside his cap, and the incumbent mayor standing proudly in her office beside the bust of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic.