Conversations With My Gardener

A successful, fifty-something Parisian artist
goes back to his roots and returns to
provincial France and his childhood home.
He has neither the energy nor the talent to
keep up the sprawling land around the
house, and takes out a small ad to find some
local help. Completely by chance, the first
applicant – who turns out to be the right
one – is an old school friend whom the
PAINTER hasn’t seen since he was a kid.
He becomes the GARDENER.

As they spend time in each other’s company,
the PAINTER builds up an impressionist’s
canvas of a man who first intrigues and then
amazes him by his honest and simple view
of the world. The gardener’s life has been
punctuated by a series of unremarkable
events. He enjoys modest happiness, and
there’s no bitterness or jealousy for the
gardener. And his heroes are always ordinary
people.

His value system involves one simple criteria
which – consciously or otherwise – serves as
a standard by which he judges people and
things: common sense. Art itself, as practiced
by his friend, only becomes beautiful to his
eyes after hours of discreet observation.
And so they enjoy a kind of belated brotherly
adolescence, that encompasses their families,
their experiences, carrots, pumpkins, life,
death, air travel, currant bushes, tastes and
colors. And by seeing everything through
each other’s eyes, they each see the world
anew.

With no artifice, they invite us to enjoy their
discovery of an everyday life that is for sharing
– another key concept for the gardener
who grows things to give to others, just as the
painter paints to show others.
Henri Cueco, himself a painter and radio
broadcaster with a keen eye for the simple
ways, of life brings us this touching tale of
friendship that is as captivating and simple as
a love story.