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Director Jean-Pierre Denis scored a Camera d'Or at Cannes in 1980 for his first film set in the Dordogne region (southwest France); the dialogue in that film was in Provençal -- unintelligible to French speakers but accurate for the Dordogne area. In La Palombière, Denis returns to Dordogne for a story, with a dialogue in French this time, about a visiting schoolteacher (Christiane Millet) and her eventual and temporary liaison with Paul (Jean-Claude Bourbault) a local worker -- the two end up trysting in the "bird blind," a tree house used to attract pigeons so Paul can shoot them. Along with the loss of authenticity in the language comes a certain distance in the relationship between the urbane woman and the provincial worker. That distance might have a larger meaning, but for some critics, it damages the believability of their sexual attraction.