Deux lions au soleil

"Themroc " ,what a colossal demagogy! a monumental spate of clichés of the post-68 era.

Deux lions au soleil " is a different matter ,because there are two actors whose chemistry is perfect.Jean-François Stevenin ( he was a Truffaut's favorite :"day for night" and mainly the wonderful schoolteacher in "l'argent de poche" ) and Jean-Pierre Sentier ( whom I did not really know) give wonderful performances.Forget the class struggle (as Faraldo finally forgets it during the story) and you have two human beings .Faraldo jettisoned all his post 68 clichés (Why do we work? Why are there wealthy people? Why are we working for peanuts?) which were present at the beginning of the movie but slowly disappear as the story progresses.

The script is not really satisfying :it recalls a movie made up of sketches in its first part.The best is certainly the segment where the public prosecutor intervenes,its dialog really rings true.The dog episode does not avoid vulgarity but Martine Sarcey does an impish job.How not to think of Bonnie and Clyde(who were losers too) discovering that the bank is broke?All these scenes do not hang well together and the love interest (Babette),though moving,does not seem to belong to the same movie.

But it does ,in a way,and once more Stevenin and Sentier are to be commended for almost transcending the flaws of the screenplay .At the end of the movie,the words are pointless:their looks and smiles tell the whole story.It features something trendy nowadays:an unexpected end.

I saw this when I lived in my country of birth, Australia. I was studying sociology, and was deeply into social class issues, especially around workers and the meaning of work.

Seeing how these two "heroes" sought to bring "some poetry" to their lives, and the ultimate consequence, was so universally sad and a comment on the human condition.

Now, living in Los Angeles, I see enormous social differentiation, and shallow movies that are all about things blowing up, and ever increasingly young and beautiful heroes.

Almost 25 years since I saw the film, I want to watch it again. I will update this comment with my new views of it.