"In the middle of a drought, a farmer is desperate to borrow a mule to help haul water from a nearby spring. He asks his neighbor for the loan of the animal. The neighbor is filled with compassion and sympathy, but simply cannot do without his mule, which he needs in order to farm his own land and provide for his own family. As the neighbor rejects the request, his face is so filled with regret you'd have little doubt he is one of the best of men. Actually, he is a thief. And what he is stealing is the joy, the hope and even the future of the man who needs the mule. Jean de Florette is a merciless study in human nature, set in Provence in the 1920s. It's the story of how two provincial French farmers systematically destroy the happiness of a man who comes out from the city to till the land."