Danse avec lui

Three years after simultaneously parting with a philanderer husband and experiencing a dramatic fall during a horse jumping contest, Alexandra Balzan (Mathilde Seigner), a Parisian architect, regains an appetite for life and love after a chance encounter with an aging misanthrope of a master horseman (Sami Frey) and his horse, in a dilapidated and deserted riding school near Beauvais. Miguel (Jean-François Pignon), the only lad to have stayed in the riding school out of faithfulness to the master and his values, is at the same time a stuntman for movies, and suffers from the disregard of film crews for the risks he has to take. Those three, in spite of their life-inflicted wounds, are legatees of an ancient equestrian science and know-how inherited from generations of master horsemen. The movie is about how the three make use of this science and know-how to redress the training of a magnificent horse, a training which has been sabotaged by a previous ignorant and careless owner. The success of this common endeavor brings back self-esteem to this woman and two men, but the movie makes clear that their scars are not healed and their difficulties in life are not ended. But - quite simply - they have lived together a period of equestrian fulfillment.