Western

I am not usually very fond of French movies but for reasons I cannot describe too well, this movie was very appealing to me. Although it is very French (it's located in Bretagne west of France) in its context, the idea of the movie is universal. It's about friendship and meeting and seducing women. The events are according to me unrealistic and mostly improbable. I live in Europe and know for a fact that having women and relationships are not as easy as they are portrayed in the movie but we would wish them to be.this makes the movie a kind of fantasy fulfillments tinged with streaks of reality throughout. In the lonely and grey countryside, inside anonymous houses, could one find love and happiness? Whenever I pass a house wherever it is located I'd think `could the woman of my life be inside that strange place that I pass by and will soon forget? If you don't really understand what' I'm saying go watch `Western' and you'll know. It will surely make you feel good.

Beware with the title of this movie! It isn't a western at all. Besides, French westerns don't exist. It's just a road-movie. Unlike to the USA, France isn't really specialized with this kind of movie. Nevertheless, I think that the few French road-movies can rival their American fellows. "Western" ranks among them and it's with this movie that Manuel Poirier went down in history by imposing his talent to the general public.

Like in a major part of road-movies, what interests the film-maker is the behavior and especially the evolution of his character(s). Here, in the very beginning of this movie, nothing can anticipate a friendship between the two main characters. However, as the movie goes along, by traveling the country, they learn to know each other. Poirier makes his two main actors nice and at the end, if Paco failed to win Marinette's love, he could gain the friendship and the comfort of his partner.

But "Western" is also an occasion for Poirier to take a realistic and sometimes ironical look on the France of the nineties, especially through Baptiste's zany game: "Bonjour, la France".

The only fault of this movie is that sometimes it drags on due to tiresome and a little pointless sequences that bring really nothing to the movie. But if you take away this fault, "Western" is a successful road-movie where you find again the omnipresence of the country, a landscape dear to Poirier.

A surrealistic story of two credible typical men with a tendency to loneliness, which is made even more intensive through chance events, to meet, and then, despite their dissimilar characters, proceed to get to know and like each other even though the circumstances of their first encounter are extremely inauspicious. Sergi López, playing the Catalonian Paco Cazale, and Sacha Bourdo, playing the Russian Nino, do not put in brilliant acting performances, but they are sufficiently good to convey the pathos in their roles, which becomes more apparent as the film progresses.

The women they meet all behave credibly, but the sum of all the encounters is so unrealistic as to appear nonsensical, even with the anchor of a picturesque background of rural western France and many of its aspects. This surrealism, or irreality, is mercifully not nearly as pronounced as in 'Buffet froid', and is even somewhat entertaining, but it detracts from the otherwise fascinating character studies of both the two travelling companions and the various people they meet.

The double date and the game of 'Bonjour, la France' are highlights in this film, but many other scenes are also of good quality and entertainment value. These two scenes and the survey scenes are particularly well acted.

The dialogue reminds the viewer of the announced purpose of the journey and the event which one can expect when the two men return. When this stage is reached, a characteristically unexpected turn leads to a refreshingly unexpected but unfortunately unrealistic conclusion.

Good ideas and good dialogue are woven rather weakly into a rather good story.

French director Manuel Poirier has made an intelligent and sensitive road-movie about two foreigners spending three weeks together hitch-hiking through northern France. Cutting out the usual french existentialist dialogue, Poirier concentrates on everyday life. There is a striking simplicity and calmness in this movie. Nevertheless it crackles with tragedy, poignancy and wit. Western is by far the best european roadmovie to have been made up to now and I recommend the film unreservedly.

Western was awarded the "Prix de jury" at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.

Poirier's film is as good a study of loneliness as anything you're likely to see. (PT Anderson's Magnolia is on the same level.) Nino's search for love is heartbreaking and, the film uses all its various scenes to underline how loneliness affects everything the characters do. The men wander, but the film doesn't.

Western is gentle, delicate, and touching--and manages to avoid any sentimentality. In other words, a rare gem.