Review of Going Places (2014) by Richard N — 03 Feb 2011

Ground-breaking in it's day, a seminal (in every sense!) event in 70's French cinema this film possibly more than any other of that time shocked and influenced in equal measure. Grabs you by the Balls (yet another of it's translated titles) and doesn't let go, often hilarious but with darker moments which give it great pace and a quintessential French style.

Showcased the talents of two of France's then up and coming young actors in Depardieu and Deware, who have an obvious chemistry on-screen. The pair live out a juvenile delinquent's fantasy of taking what and who they want without thought for the consequences of their actions, reality only biting once they become involved with a much older woman (played by Jeanne Moreau).

Our two protagonists, Jean Claude and Pierrot (Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere) are hoodlums who take their pleasures from running fast and loose, terrorising neighbourhoods, getting involved in robbery, assault, car theft, hopping freight trains, anything in fact which doesn't involve putting in an honest days work to earn money. Instead they steal from an unfortunate doctor, threatening at gunpoint to disrupt his kids restful slumbers should he fail to cough up hundreds of francs.

Salon assistant Marie Ange (Miou-Miou) becomes involved when her boss is the boys next victim, having his new citroen hot-wired and taken from right outside his hair studio. A short balding man in his 40's, he gets a kick by taunting the two younger men that Marie Ange is his plaything. They soon manage to convince her that she should be with guys her own age i.e. them! But Pierrot is injured in a sensitive area while fleeing the salon owner's bullets. Deciding that revenge is a dish best served cold, they return his car, but with a few potentially lethal modifications of their own, which should seal his fate on the next hairpin bend he encounters...

It's not long before the police are on their tail, so they evade capture by stealing bicycles, a farmer's 2CV (it is France, after all) then hopping a train. The only other person onboard, a young woman feeding her kid (Brigitte Fossey) stands no chance faced with two horny young dudes and no-where to run, and ends up giving in to their persistent advances.

The scene switches to a beach resort in winter, where the delinquent duo break into a boarded-up summer chalet, sniff underwear left by a young girl (to guess her age,naturally) Pierrot is sodomised by his pal (it's ok between friends, Jean-Claude tells him), they hijack an elderly man's motorbike, shoplift clothes from a department store, then get blown out by two young girls who they assume will be easy lays. But somehow none of this seems gratuitous.

The film then enters its second half, where Jean Claude makes the fateful decision to hook up with a mature, experienced woman of the world (Jeanne Moreau) , who can teach them the art of love. And where better to meet just such a woman, but a women's jail. After several months inside, they figure, a recently released (& desperate!) inmate would be ideal fodder for their libidinous pursuits.

After convincing the sceptical Jeanne Pirolle (Moreau) of their intentions, and that they're willing to pay her, albeit in kind, for the services they're certain she will soon be willingly bestowing upon them, they take her first to a cafe then a hotel, and prepare for their fantasies to be made real. Pierrot is unsure of her, but is strung along by his domineering and more charismatic crony.

Come the morning after, and they awake to find the woman dead in their hotel room, the result of suicide. Shocked, they return to Marie Ange, for solace. They manage to trace the woman's son, taking him into their fold, no doubt guilt-ridden at having indirectly caused the death of his mother. Sharing everything, including the favours of Marie Ange, they get another shock to the system when Jacques manages to make her come, something Jean Claude and Pierrot hadn't been able to do. Realising she's not frigid after all, they soon unburden themselves of Jacques, and continue on their road-trip without him, stealing more cars and deflowering a virgin along the way.

The film doesn't have a dramatic or conclusive ending, the trio merely seen entering a tunnel as the screen fades to black, the nihilistic road-trip to nowhere continuing on in the viewer's imagination. The perfectly matched score by Stephane Grapelli sets just the right tone for the movie and adds to the overall frivolous nature.

It doesn't try to be patronisingly moralistic, portraying Jean-Claude and Pierrot as neither heros nor victims of circumstance, leaving the viewer free to judge. At the same time the movie gives an interesting insight into societal and generational tensions in 70's France, not to mention attitudes towards sex -Brigitte Fossey, Isabelle Huppert and Miou-Miou play the pair's love or rather lust interests, and as such are depicted in various states of undress as often as the script would seem to allow. Nice.

I've probably watched 'Les Valseuses' a dozen times and always seem to find something new, the true test of a great film, in my view. It's a well crafted and engaging piece of cinema by one of France's finest ever writer/directors Bertrand Blier, which has lost surprisingly little of it's impact in the intervening (almost four) decades and remains one of my favourite road/buddy movies of all time...