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Not so many people like the movies of Bertrand blier simply because they don't understand them. Simply because they are different kinds of people.

If you have not been living under a deep desperation intertwined with great personal hope it may be hard for you to enjoy the humor blier shown here.

And also the film of blier cannot be classified easily as black-comedy or cult etc. like those of pulp fiction etc. Because there is this delicacy which the audience of north-america frequently fail to appreciate.

When I looked at these two `hooligans' dining with Jeanne moreau in the seaside restaurant, I felt they were more gentil than any gentleman can have been.

The urge to make love wildly like these is the normal reaction we feel under the unbearable pressure of meaningless being-symbolized by the camion suddenly emerges at the Carrefour.

SO, les valseuses is much better a name than going places. To dance a valse you need to be elegant, but going places you don't.

This is one a most famous movies of the French sexual empowerment of the seventies, starring Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere in extremely sarcastic roles. It is also one of the many dark psychological dramas of the seventies/eighties, such as "Serie Noire", "Buffet Froid", "Beau Pere", all realized by Blier.

However, I would like to correct the previous comment that was posted on the movie: the translated title in English is very far from the French version. It is true that both protagonists are "going places", but the title in French could be literally translated by "the waltz dancers", which is a metaphor for the movement of the testicles...

This mean-spirited French comedy from the mid-seventies retains all it's freshness, even by today's standards. In fact, it's aimless structure and cynical wit would probably be more distressing to audiences now, more than ever (as vacuously preoccupied with good taste as most movies are these days). This is one of many Bertrand Blier films that tackles some of the more obtuse viewpoints on the male's pursuit of happiness. Courageous and effective filmmaking, and a very nice introduction from Gerard Depardieu. No small mention should be made of Stephane Grappelli's spare but brilliant music score. GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS and TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR YOU will follow this gem.

I only lasted through fifteen minutes of this. The first scene has the two main characters - big strong guys - chasing a middle-aged woman around a block of flats and finally cornering her. The woman is prim and prissy and no-one I'd want to know. Her behaviour is as childish as theirs. But there's two of them and only one of her, and they're stronger than her. It really disturbs me that so many people seem to find this scene, and the ones that follow, funny. I think there's a big difference between being bourgeois and having some basic compassion for the human condition. In fact the emptiness of the main characters strikes me as at least as bourgeois in its way as the people who are into glossy cars and so on. Too bad, since I love Stephane Grappelli.

The movie has a distinct (albeit brutish and rough) humanity for all its borderline depravity - the zippy/lyrical score points up the comic side of their misadventures, and even when they're at their most thuggish (like terrorizing the woman on the train), a semi-pitiful vulnerability lurks never far away (Dewaere sucks on her breasts like a baby). Blier cuts away from the scene where Depardieu may be about to rape Dewaere, so we're never sure how explicitly to read the manifestly homoerotic aspect of their relationship - either way, that incident is the start of their relative humanization (so the movie could certainly be read as pro-gay, although it could likely be read as pro-anything you want). The movie has many objectionable scenes and points of sexual politics and is probably best taken as a general cartoon on the foibles of both sexes, making a mockery of the whole notion of sensitivity and honesty, and hitting numerous points of possible profundity on the basis that if you fire off enough shots, some of them are bound to hit.