L'Échappée sauvage (2017) User Reviews

a sort of Le grand Meaulnes

[Kirpianuscus · 24 April 2021]

Its basic virtue - it reminds me Le grand Meaulnes. The atmosphere, the three kids, the music, the nature, the emotion seems be the same. A pure beautiful film about friendship, summer, forest, breathing, impecable crafted, poetic in high measure.

Class Taboos Turned Upside-Down

[jean-suchard · 10/10 · 25 September 2021]

This city boy is from an upper middle class family and is being educated and brought up to be taking his place as a responsible leader in society in one of the professions. He is dressed in the uniform of his private school and when the chauffer-driven car which is taking him home on summer vacation breaks down, two rural children about his age but of working class stock make themselves known to him. The boy is already haughty. We have noticed that he will not return the gaze of the driver when he looked in the rear view mirror. The chauffer does not even dare speak to the boy to tell him he is off to the nearest village to get something in a can to get the motor running again. In the same way he attempts to ignore the country children. They are in the middle of nowhere, a Belgian movie filmed in Brittany. Yet, this nowhere is where the poor brother and sister live. This country is their home. The snobbish boy is about to do some learning that he never got from his family nor from his private school. He is about to learn the freedom to be himself. Because the country siblings befriend him, he learns to return that friendship just as he is going through puberty and that impressionable time in a boy's life is about to be imprinted with acceptance, equality, and affection. Alien concepts between the European classes in the middle of the last century. The film is only 16 minutes long and cost a mere 6,000 euros to produce. As we have come to expect from this European art form, the photography, plot, and acting are all perfect. It is well-paced with the transformation of the well-to-do boy made complete as he casts of his air of superiority just as he gets rid of his stuffy uniform to go for a swim. The girl shows her affection by bandaging the boy's foot but her brother thinks this is too girly like kissing and stuff. So he grabs their new friend by the arm and makes him walk to the lake for a real boys' activity that is swimming. The two attractive boys strip down to their underpants while their clothes dry in the early summer heat. What a nice touch at the end where we see a boy who was sullen at the beginning has been transformed into a smiling boy with two new friends and as the car is driven away, the boy's legs hang out the window of the front passenger seat. All the class taboos have been broken. This is a lovely film, made with such skill that not a single word is spoken.