Manuel Poirier's "western" (1994) told the story of two losers on the roads of Brittany.
"Chemins de Traverse" is more of the same,but it does not mean it is bad : one cannot be wrong with brilliant actor Sergi Lopez (7 movies with this director,plus remarkable works such as"Pan's labyrinth " and the unforgettable "Harry un ami qui vous veut du bien" ).
Victor ,a forty-something , is an underdog who wanders along the roads of Brittany , with his teenager son in tow ;he does casual jobs ,some legal ,some less so ....The boy has never been able to stay in a school a whole year and his education suffers accordingly ; although dad loves his son, he does not seem to care about his future : one sees him talk once with a school's headmaster ,and that's it ;a sensitive boy ,sometimes used as a prop (the bouquet he gives to the chanteuse who covers Edith Piaf's classics ) ,most of the time left to his own devices ;he tries to make acquaintance with a black girl but she only speaks English and they can't break through the language barrier.
Manuel Poirier takes advantage of the splendid Britton landscapes ,but the sea ,almost always present is a dead end :hence the last sequence ,in which, for the first time , Victor seems to understand that a father's job is never done ,and that his troubled past must not prevent Felix from leading a normal teenager's life .
Although there's a dejà vu feeling in this effort, Sergi Lopez and his co-star Kevin Miranda , as a boy resigned to his fate , portray endearing characters.
