- Pace54 · in between
- You take turns, with no clock, but a boule takes three or four seconds to play, and the roll slowing down towards the jack makes you hold your breath. The whole game swings between calm aiming and nervous waiting.
- Difficulty57.7 · in between
- The landing circle shakes more the further you aim, and Dédé plays well, better every round. A lost round is replayed from its start, never the whole match: the ending has to be earned, but it's never lost in one go.
- Tone47.9 · in between
- A mild October Saturday under the plane trees, a rivalry for fun, café noise. The only tension comes from the game, a few centimetres between two boules, and it ends in laughter or applause.
- Story41.2 · in between
- Short lines in speech bubbles: Dédé teasing, the café owner, the kids. Each round opens with two lines and closes with one. You follow a small story, Dédé's last game before he hangs up his boules, without ever reading a paragraph.
- Scale46.7 · in between
- A village square and its people: you start at gravel level with three people, and every round the camera pulls back to show the terrace, then the whole square gathering round the game.
- Form49.7 · in between
- It's pétanque, a rule everyone knows: the boule closest to the jack scores. What's invented is the gesture: you set a landing point on the ground, and the aiming circle breathes and shakes like a hand.
- Look50.2 · in between
- A tilted top-down view, ochre gravel flecked with stones, plane-tree shadows that sway and falling leaves. The chrome boules catch the sky and dust sprays on every landing. Rich without being busy, and the picture thickens as the crowd arrives.
The theme
Saturday, October 17th, from 3 p.m. to dusk, on a village square in the south-west of France, under the plane trees, outside the Café des Sports. Dédé, 81, county champion in 1979, plays his last game of pétanque against his old partner's granddaughter. Three rounds, and the square slowly filling up, until the decider: his last boule tucked against the jack, and yours to knock it away. On the carreau he hands you his boules, engraved A.D. 1979, and the first-quarter moon rises over the bell tower.
The mechanics
Drag your finger (or the mouse, or the arrow keys) to place a landing circle on the gravel; it breathes, tightening and widening, and you let go (or press Space) when it is small. The boule drops inside the circle, then rolls a little along the dotted line, following the slope. Whoever doesn't hold the point plays; at the end of the end, every boule closer to the jack than the other side's best scores. A button (or T) lets you choose to point, laying your boule by the jack, or to shoot, knocking one of Dédé's away; the aim shows where you're aiming, not where the boule will stop. A lost round is replayed from its start; rounds you've won stay won.
Palette
Ochre gravel #d8b77a flecked with #b9925a, blue-green plane-tree shade #4f6b5e, cream bark #e9e0c9, chrome boules #c9d2dc with a sky-blue glint #8fc1e3, golden boules #e8b33a, a red jack #c8402a, a sky #f4e4c1 turning apricot #f0a46a then mauve #7d5a7a, cream speech bubbles #fff8e8 outlined in brown #3a2a20. Bricolage Grotesque for the title and the centimetres, Patrick Hand for the bubbles. Warm, noisy, a Saturday that laughs.
