Le plein de super

Bearing more than a distant resemblance with Dino Risi's "Il sorpasso" ,"le plein de super" ,in spite of an obvious misogyny and a little liking for scatology ,is an entertaining intriguing road movie. Four men in a car (or two times two more like),four immature men ,all claiming they are sexual supermen but actually are washouts pitiful poor lads:one of them is sterile -hence the final scene when misogyny seems to let some tenderness in - and another has a child he almost never sees for his marriage is a thing of the past.Often funny,even offbeat ,with a good cast which includes Etienne Chicot who wrote some of the music (end credits) and the wonderful Patrick Bouchitey who made the very same year the extraordinary "la meilleure façon de marcher" (Claude MIller).

What's more puzzling is that Alain Cavalier's 1980 opus "un étrange voyage" will be a "railroad movie" since most the story takes place along the railroad line."Le Plein de Super" and that 1980 film were Cavalier's come back after mediocre flicks such as "la Chamade" and paved a reliable way to his towering achievement "Thérèse"

It's a rather odd road movie, although of course it's not an American one it's a French one and this really seems a bit strange. The start seems to be rather boring as a car salesman having to deliver a luxury Chevrolet station wagon to his rich client. Although somewhere along the way he has three more lads along and it gets very funny. I have to say that I did not imagine that there would be drugs or ordering breakfast and maybe an English breakfast and you will never think to hear one of the guys get money from another man in his hotel room. There is also a son for a ride in the car and his mum's room gets trashed. There are some surreal moments and from that first seems rather dull it is a wonderful and amusing buddy like friendship develops. Really nice and of course there is so much eating in and out of the car because this is a very French road movie.

I'm not a lover of the road movie. Having sat through Harry and Tonto, Thelma and Louise and any number of X and Y equivalents, I'm ready to abandon the genre. Cavalier's film just wasn't that interesting, being only a series of vignettes of no great interest (shame to see Nathalie Baye doing a cameo near the beginning only to disappear from the story). The truth is these four guys are losers, and there is very little to learn from losers. They make the same stupid macho mistakes, lose their wives/girlfriends, then mope about it. Klouk even proposes to the others that they try to impregnate his wife since he is infertile. God, if I thought one of these idiots could make my wife pregnant, I'd have them all castrated.

I will say that Etienne Chicot, whose work I have admired over many years does a splendid job playing Charles, a guy who manages to stay on this side of the law, but only just.