Miss Violet

Louise Violet (Alexandra Lamy), a forty-year-old Parisian teacher, takes a posting in a French village at the end of the nineteenth century, determined to open a school there. First she has to persuade the parents, whose days follow the seasons, to let their children come. Éric Besnard follows her as the mayor, Joseph (Grégory Gadebois), backs her, and the families slowly give way, in a story that treats learning to read as the first thing a person owns outright.