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.