Western

This is probably one of the worst French movies I have seen so far, among more than 100 french movies I have ever seen. Terrible screenplay and very medioacre/unprofessional acting causes the directing powerless. with all that it doesn't matter how nice western french scene and fancy music can add to the story.

One of the key weakness of this movie is that these two characters do NOT attract people, as an audience I don't care what happens to them.

It amazed me how this movie won jury prize in cannes, man, I love almost all the awarded movies in cannes, but not this one. A major disappointment for me.

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.

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.

'Western' shows all different walks life can have in store. Two immigrants, a Russian and a Spaniard, travel throughout western France. Not only the landscapes look a bit British, but also the dialogues and characters remind of British movies. The scene shot on a terrace with an Ivory Coaster from Bretagne is very funny. But other scenes show how senseless life can be.

I like road movies and this one of the best movies in its genre.

Anyone who's seem this film will agree its charm is uniqe. It's a very simple story, involving two men who meet in bizarre circumstances and who end up travelling together. For some reason, the film is SO organic and human that it drags you in right away. There's something in all characters that reminds us about the simple pleasures in life.