GOING PLACES (LES VALSEUSES)
Directed by Bertrand Blier
Written by Bertrand Blier
Starring Gerard Depardieu, Miou-Miou
Released in 1974
Directed by Bertrand Blier
Written by Bertrand Blier
Starring Gerard Depardieu, Miou-Miou
Released in 1974
I very much wanted to at least like Bertrand Blier's 1974 film Going Places, or Les Valseuses, if you prefer. I wanted to like the movie because it stars Gerard Depardieu and Miou-Miou, the latter a quite marvelous actor who has been in any number of fine French films, some of which even permitted her to remain moderately clothed. I also liked Jeanne Moreau and I rather foolishly had hoped her character would add a touch of maturity to this exercise in revolutionary behavior.
That just goes to show you what an idiot I can be.
The movie starts out flashing its counter-cultural credentials all over the place as the two young men, Pierrot and Jean Claude--Patrick DeWaeare and Depardieu--burst into the frame in a stolen shopping cart while pursuing a not altogether beautiful woman whom they hope to rob. The two young men charm the audience immediately, just as they make us recoil ever so slightly as they toy with this woman whom they decide to call Ursula. You see, Jean-Claude and Pierrot are apolitical nihilists. They are the ultimate extreme of a perfect misunderstanding of the influence the 1960s spread out over the following decade. They do not work, neither do they toil. They do not love, although they do conquer. They do not purchase, and yet they consume, at least for the moment. And while they do these things, silly music plays across the soundtrack, suggesting that the boys' inner charm is just a smile away.
Indeed, these two men do not exude repugnant behavior or attitudes. They are virtually amoral in their drive to avoid boredom. They are, in their way, the prototypes of punk. Except--
Johnny Rotten, to the best of my knowledge, never paid a woman to breast-feed Sid Vicious on a train while the woman rode along on her way to meet her military husband.
I'm not going to give away every item in this film that leaves me uneasy. However, I will say that the acting is universally outstanding and if what these hedonistic nihilists did all the time wasn't so socially counterproductive--not all anarchists are nihilists but all nihilists are anarchists, if you catch my drift--this film would stand out as the landmark it clearly yearned to be. The problem is that most of the people Jean-Claude and Pierrot confront are not the cause of the boredom. For instance, when Jean-Claude confronts the security man in the department store, the employee snarks off some sly remarks and Jean-Claude retorts in kind. Fine. But then again his plan is to buy suits with stolen money. Indeed, all of the targets in this film are middle or lower-middle class, and our guys ridicule one man as "Proletariat!" while addressing others as "Comrade!"
Technically, this film lacks any major flaws, unless you want to include a bit of potential irony that was either implied or allowed to slip away, I'm not quite certain which. Here is what I mean: The boys steal a barber/pimp's Citroen DS sports car after one of them gets shot in a testicle. The shooting victim is so outraged that he talks a friend into loosening one of the car's front wheels so that, once the vehicle is recovered, the wheel will come off and the driver will get hurt or killed.
So far so good. After a great deal of sex, the boys learn that the car has been sold to an insurance salesman. Nearly an hour later into the film, we find our presumed heroes driving down the highway in this same car, a car they have stolen three times. We expect the wheel to come off.
We expect a lot of things in this movie. Most of them never happen.
This film was supposed to knock down doors and build castles among the enlightened. What it does instead is simply trick a few ought-to-know-better critics into believing it actually had something to say.
That just goes to show you what an idiot I can be.
The movie starts out flashing its counter-cultural credentials all over the place as the two young men, Pierrot and Jean Claude--Patrick DeWaeare and Depardieu--burst into the frame in a stolen shopping cart while pursuing a not altogether beautiful woman whom they hope to rob. The two young men charm the audience immediately, just as they make us recoil ever so slightly as they toy with this woman whom they decide to call Ursula. You see, Jean-Claude and Pierrot are apolitical nihilists. They are the ultimate extreme of a perfect misunderstanding of the influence the 1960s spread out over the following decade. They do not work, neither do they toil. They do not love, although they do conquer. They do not purchase, and yet they consume, at least for the moment. And while they do these things, silly music plays across the soundtrack, suggesting that the boys' inner charm is just a smile away.
Indeed, these two men do not exude repugnant behavior or attitudes. They are virtually amoral in their drive to avoid boredom. They are, in their way, the prototypes of punk. Except--
Johnny Rotten, to the best of my knowledge, never paid a woman to breast-feed Sid Vicious on a train while the woman rode along on her way to meet her military husband.
I'm not going to give away every item in this film that leaves me uneasy. However, I will say that the acting is universally outstanding and if what these hedonistic nihilists did all the time wasn't so socially counterproductive--not all anarchists are nihilists but all nihilists are anarchists, if you catch my drift--this film would stand out as the landmark it clearly yearned to be. The problem is that most of the people Jean-Claude and Pierrot confront are not the cause of the boredom. For instance, when Jean-Claude confronts the security man in the department store, the employee snarks off some sly remarks and Jean-Claude retorts in kind. Fine. But then again his plan is to buy suits with stolen money. Indeed, all of the targets in this film are middle or lower-middle class, and our guys ridicule one man as "Proletariat!" while addressing others as "Comrade!"
Technically, this film lacks any major flaws, unless you want to include a bit of potential irony that was either implied or allowed to slip away, I'm not quite certain which. Here is what I mean: The boys steal a barber/pimp's Citroen DS sports car after one of them gets shot in a testicle. The shooting victim is so outraged that he talks a friend into loosening one of the car's front wheels so that, once the vehicle is recovered, the wheel will come off and the driver will get hurt or killed.
So far so good. After a great deal of sex, the boys learn that the car has been sold to an insurance salesman. Nearly an hour later into the film, we find our presumed heroes driving down the highway in this same car, a car they have stolen three times. We expect the wheel to come off.
We expect a lot of things in this movie. Most of them never happen.
This film was supposed to knock down doors and build castles among the enlightened. What it does instead is simply trick a few ought-to-know-better critics into believing it actually had something to say.
