Movie: Going Places
May. 2nd, 2012 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talktoolooseLast night, we watched "Going Places (Les valseuses)," a 1974 Bertrand Blier film, starring a young and shockingly hot Gérard Depardieu. It's a loose, giddy 70s movie about two childish, violent but charming young criminals on a rampage of spontaneous crime in the name of living a free life.
I think in the context of the time it was made, it was a kick in the crotch to the establishment and we are supposed to be rooting for the two criminals and identifying with them as they twit the bourgeoisie and let out their rage against anyone in authority.
The movie works very well, but the misogyny is pretty off-putting. It's like to the filmmakers, there are only two archetypal women: mothers and wives, and both are seen as stifling hypocrites who must be fought against and degraded. The women in the movie either resist this abuse and "get what they deserve" or awaken to their own sexual and societal freedom by being slapped around and threatened with rape. heh, having written this last paragraph, I'm angrier at the film than I was when i watched it.
And it's hard to say if Miou Miou, as their muse and eventual crime partner, actually has the most power in the trio by the end.
I think in the context of the time it was made, it was a kick in the crotch to the establishment and we are supposed to be rooting for the two criminals and identifying with them as they twit the bourgeoisie and let out their rage against anyone in authority.
The movie works very well, but the misogyny is pretty off-putting. It's like to the filmmakers, there are only two archetypal women: mothers and wives, and both are seen as stifling hypocrites who must be fought against and degraded. The women in the movie either resist this abuse and "get what they deserve" or awaken to their own sexual and societal freedom by being slapped around and threatened with rape. heh, having written this last paragraph, I'm angrier at the film than I was when i watched it.
And it's hard to say if Miou Miou, as their muse and eventual crime partner, actually has the most power in the trio by the end.
