MANON DES SOURCES - Manon of the Spring

Manon des sources is a 1986 French period drama film directed by Claude Berri, as the second part of a diptych with Jean de Florette, released the same year.

Ten years after the events of Jean de Florette, Jean's daughter Manon lives in the Provençal countryside near Les Romarins, the farm that her father once owned. She has taken up residence with an elderly Piedmontese squatter couple who teach her to live off the land, tending to a herd of goats and hunting for birds and rabbits. Ugolin Soubeyran has begun a successful business growing carnations at Les Romarins with his uncle César&mdashalso known as Papet&mdashthanks to the water provided by the spring there.

As a young child, Manon had suffered the loss of her father, who died from a blow to the head while using explosives in an attempt to find a water source. Unknown to Jean, Ugolin and his uncle had plugged the spring in order to ruin his efforts to make his farm profitable. After Jean died, César and Ugolin bought the farm cheaply from his widow&mdashManon's mother&mdashand unblocked the spring. Manon witnessed this as a child, and understood how the two men had tricked her father and profited directly from his death.

After seeing her bathe nude in the mountains, Ugolin develops an interest in Manon. When he approaches her, she reacts with disgust at his vileness. But Ugolin's interest in Manon becomes obsessive, culminating in sewing a ribbon from her hair onto his chest. At the same time, Manon becomes interested in Bernard, a handsome and educated schoolteacher recently arrived in the village.

When she overhears two villagers talking about the circumstances of her father's death, Manon realises that many in the village knew of the crime but had remained silent, for the Soubeyran family was locally important. While searching for a goat that fell into a crevice above the village, Manon finds the underground source of the spring that supplies water to the local farms and village. To take her revenge on both the Soubeyrans and the villagers, who knew but did nothing, she stops the flow of water using the iron-oxide clay and rocks found nearby.