Going Places

French director Bertrand Blier’s breakthrough film, a controversial hit on release, helped launch Gérard Depardieu to superstar fame. A riotous, profane, darkly comic road movie about a pair of gleefully amoral petty criminals (Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere) who force themselves sexually on multiple women, it is problematic by modern standards. However, Blier’s anarchic, wilfully vulgar style and strong female characters make the story more subversive satire on bourgeois propriety than dubious male fantasy. The stellar ensemble cast also features Miou-Miou, French screen queen Jeanne Moreau and a young Isabelle Huppert.