Pardevant notaire est l’histoire croisée de quatre situations notariales dans une étude de Haute - Auvergne. A travers le récit de deux ventes négociées, un inventaire et un dossier de succession, l’étude du notaire devient le règne des histoires de propriété et d’argent, des conversations intimes et des échanges secrets, bref de la comédie humaine.

A country solicitor
Four overlapping cases being handled by a rural law firm in the Haute-Auvergne. The film follows the handling of two sales transactions, an inventory and a inheritance case. The film becomes the scene of property and financials deals, private conversations and secret exchanges, in short, the comedy of human life. The importance of words and the scrutiny of such details as gestures, attitudes and looks reveal certain ways of relating to the outside world, notably in matters of death and money. The painstakingly detailed approach to this closed notarial world allows us to witness a series of tableaux in several acts, in which the characters and their behavior seem part of another world, so close to our own yet so distant, so different from us yet so like us.