A street scene in Villerville with a scene from the movie
A Normandy village whose picture-postcard streets became famous as a setting for the hit film ‘A Monkey in Winter’ starring Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Gabin is now searching not for fame but for its daily bread.
Villerville, in the Calvados area of Normandy, has a summer population of around 4,000 but only 600 year-round residents, leaving them with a shortage of stores and services—and especially baguettes—a situation faced by many small villages in rural areas of France.
But Villerville has a plan: the town has bought a shop, formerly a pharmacy, and is doing €35,000 worth of renovations to turn it into a functioning boulangerie. And they’ve set what they hope are attractive terms: a low rent with a gradual rise and a €5,000 startup cost that can be paid over time.
Who would have thought that baking is a job Frenchmen no longer will do????
Oh, I think you may have the wrong end of it there: it’s not the shortage of willing baguette-makers, but rather the difficulty of making a living baking them in small rural towns, especially those where there is often also no longer a local grocery. Too many Carrefours at too many carrefours…