There is a provincial town in the French "départment" of the Ardennes, somewhere in northeastern France, by the name of Charleville-Mézières,where nothing ever happens. When the weather is cold in winter it is colder there than in any other place around. Middle-class people there stick to their ancient values and at eight p.m. there is nobody in the streets. A dull place indeed. But still water runs deep and Charleville-Mézières is also home to a wonderful World Festival of Puppet Theatres. And mostly it is the place where, right in the middle of a stale bourgeois society, an eccentric genius was born who will live forever, Arthur Rimbaud. Now, it looks as if his spirit still blows over the sleepy town. Jean-Hugues Berrou, a Rimbaud specialist (who wrote three books about his hero), has a knack for scouting out for the most unexpected characters possible in Charleville-Mézières. Of course, the marathon runner in the hideous zebra-striped purple shorts, the shabby poet preparing for a spectacle in carpet slippers, the archaeologist who claims he can read the secret message printed in fossils, the homeless book-lover, do not share Rimbaud's excellence, but what they have in common with the author of 'Le Bateau Ivre" is their refreshing eccentricity. Berrou films them without particular research but with loving complicity, and the result is an off-beat tone akin to Tati, Etaix or Iosseliani. Not that the director despises less unconventional people, since he films with the same respect the two municipal workers who take care of Rimbaud's tomb in Charleville's old graveyard. In fact, the film centers around them, around their conversations full of common sense. They are the link between the lunacy of Rimbaud's heirs (including an international club of fans who pay tribute to the poet in odd ways, including urinating on his grave!) and the sensible part of the population.
All this makes "Praline" an odd object, not of this world. An ode to those who get off the beaten track, whether in Charleville-Mézières or anywhere else in the world.