I santissimi

"They don't make movies like this anymore" has been used for so many movies but in the case of "Les Valseuses" (or "Going Places") you might say, "they can't make movies like this anymore". Whether it's a positive or a negative is a matter of opinion.

From the way I see it, only a gender swap would justify a remake for it's impossible to imagine a filmmaker making a film, let alone a debut, about two marginals at the prime of their masculine strength enjoying harassing and assaulting women, making us wish they could 'just' keep on stealing cars or money. It's quite fitting that the title is a slang term meaning "balls" in French as that's what it takes to dare concoct such a vitriolic story, even in the liberated post-68 France. One can despise Bertand Blier's misuse of talents but not without admiring his nerve.

The film met with commercial success and was one of the highest-grossing of the year only topped by the erotic "Emmanuelle". I guess the timing worked in favor of Blier for the cinematic community was eager to embrace a sort of free-spirited joyful anarchical ride by thugs who don't give a damn about the consequences of their action in their quests for instant pleasures. It's a revenge of the "populo" against the little ones and the weaselly bourgeois hiding in the limited coziness of their suburban life.

The opening sequence says it all, Jean-Claude played by Depardieu is sitting in a caddie (the symbol of consumerist society) pushed by Pierrot (Patrick Dewaere), they swing across a deserted street, preying on a fat woman they end up cornering next to her apartment, steal her purse after stealing a few kisses. The scene is not enjoyable but has the merit of setting the tone, making the starting point of your rooting below "zero" and it's a credit to a solid narrative and the incredible writing talent of Blier (who wrote the original 72 novel) to make these characters reach a certain point of likability.

They're no better at the end, but they realize sex and money can't be the only drivers, there's got to be more than or behind that. The caddie scene already established them as drifters and vagabonds, but that's the stuff poetry was made off and in the first post-war oli-crisis, where good society looked for scapegoats, they were targets, too. And so when they bring a stolen car back to its owner Pierrot gets shot in the groin. Their only trophy is Marie-Ange (Miou-Miou) a worker used and abused by the car owner. Point is made that even the victims aren't always innocent in that rigged game of life.

One could see a tactical trick from Blier who doesn't make us root for his antiheroes rather than show the rest no better than them, but there are exceptions: the doctor who heals Pierrot isn't immune to a robbery, Jean-Claude even makes the sinister threat of "paying goodnight to his children". And later in a train, they watch a woman (Brigitte Fossey) breastfeeding her baby and one thing leading to another, Pierrot suckles the woman's breast while Jean-Claude titillates her. Now that's hardly a detail and as horrific as the scene is (and it is) it mostly highlights the insecurity of the thugs and their incapability to draw moral lines into their actions. A honest question would be "why"?

They're bad guys, but indeed, why? Marie-Ange is used as a sexual object and while Jean-Claude is having a good time, she doesn't. Pierrot can't bring himself to pleasure fearing impotence from the wound. Earlier, the car mechanic took Marie-Ange as a 'benefit in kind' but got upset because she was frigid. Marie-Ange is the catalyst character in the way she reveals the limit of the Pierrot and Jean-Claude's hedonism, inasmuch as they want to bring her to pleasure, they're so focused on their own that ultimately it backfires at them. It might explain Pierrot's need for tenderness in the infamous train sequence, a wish to reassure himself that it's still working. It's a quest of pleasure but unlike money, it takes two to get it, and it's a miracle that nothing coming close to a real rape is shown.

I guess that would have prompted people to walk out the theaters and Ebert himself, hated the film for its uncompromising sociopathy, saying Bertrand Blier (who wrote the original novel) almost presented himself as a man one would like to spend time with. Still, despite the virulent criticism it got in France, the film became the equivalent of "Easy Riders". There is wildness, unpredictability but even a tenderness during a segment where the duo meets a former inmate played by Jeanne Moreau, a woman they wish to bring her as much pleasure as she needs. Ultimately even Marie-Ange would reach the fourth sky and as the plot moves forward, the film gets a little less macho-centric. And by playing it a little less 'fast and furious', the two thugs become more genuinely appealing.

And their appeal with a teenager named Jacqueline (Isabelle Huppert) speaks volume about the way self-proclaimed and careless rebels are regarded, like romantic figures. Any lesser film would have made it look manipulative but Dewaere and Depardieu have such great chemistry and are so complementary, one is nervous and cerebral, the other is flamboyant and exuberant, so maybe the success of the film lies in that simple truth, with the right cast, you can get away with everything, except for a few scenes. But to call Blier misogynistic would be unfair, unlike "Last Tango in Paris", the shooting went well, no polemic resurfaced and even Miou-Miou said she had great memories (she even worked with Blier again).

And thankfully, Blier would sign other great movies where women would be treated with more consideration, but heneeded one shocker, one punch in the guts of good taste and social convenience to put himself in the radar. And so he did.