Ein Sommer in Südfrankreich (2016)

Young Charlotte Conrad travels to the south of France to settle an inheritance. Her late uncle Olivier, with whom she spent several years of her childhood, left her half of the funeral business he ran. Charlotte is already considering what to do with the property and eventually arrives intending to sell it. But she has not reckoned with André Vidal, who worked for her uncle for years and inherited the other half of the business. He and an employee, Gilbert, want to keep the business going and offer Charlotte the chance to remain a silent partner behind the scenes. It seems the two cannot find common ground. Charlotte turns down André’s offer to play boules and let the winner decide what happens next. Since Rose, the owner of the guesthouse Charlotte had booked, has died, she stays with the two men in the inherited house. Determined to carry out her plan, Charlotte looks through the records and then anonymously calls the tax office, landing André with a tax investigation. The inspectors discover that Olivier buried far more people than he declared in his records—and had therefore saved more than €88,000 in taxes. Realizing that the business cannot continue under these circumstances, André decides that Olivier’s burial will be the funeral home’s last. Charlotte belatedly realizes that André is the boy next door she often played with as a child. Olivier had taken him in after his parents died. By now, she feels guilty about making the call to the tax office. But the village does not want to lose the business either, and quickly raises €18,500, because its founder, Olivier, always had a sympathetic ear and comforting words for the relatives of the deceased. Having earlier admitted, with a heavy heart, that she was responsible for bringing the tax investigators down on them, Charlotte now accepts André’s offer to play boules. Olivier taught them both the game when they were children, and Charlotte wins. But she decides that André and Gilbert can carry on the business while she goes home and returns to her work as a business consultant. However, on the taxi ride to the airport, she decides to stay in the village after all, having fallen in love with the area—with all its childhood memories—and with André. So Charlotte takes over Rose’s guesthouse.