Maine-Océan Express (Jacques Rozier, 1986)

Luis Rego, Lydia Feld, and Rosa-Maria Gomes in Maine-Océan Express

Cast: Rosa-Maria Gomes, Luis Rego, Bernard Menez, Lydia Feld, Yves Afonso, Pedro Armendáriz Jr. Screenplay: Lydia Feld, Jacques Rozier. Cinematography: Acácio de Almeida. Film editing: Marine Brun, Jacques Rozier. Music: Hubert Degex, Anne Frédérick, Francis Hime. 

If I had to say what Jacques Rozier's Maine-Océan Express is about, which as a movie blogger I kind of have to do, I'd say it's about 130 minutes long. Forced to do better, I'd have to call it a screwball odyssey in which, although it begins and ends with two different travelers, the viewer is the Odysseus, forced to come to terms with a variety of wacky incidents. It starts with a Brazilian samba dancer (Rosa-Maria Gomes) boarding a train, on which, because she has failed to have her ticket stamped at the station, she is confronted by a ticket inspector (Luis Rego) who, because she speaks only a little French and English and he speaks no Portuguese, has trouble explaining what the problem is. He calls in his supervisor (Bernard Menez), who insists that rules must be followed and she must pay a fine, but has just as much trouble explaining the problem, until a lawyer (Lydia Feld), accompanied by her large black dog, tries to act as interpreter since she speaks a little Portuguese. Things get sorted out a little, and when they reach the town where the lawyer is scheduled to act in defense of a fisherman (Yves Afonso) who is being sued for an act of road rage, the samba dancer accompanies the lawyer -- for some reason I'm not quite clear about. Eventually, the samba dancer, the lawyer, the dog, the fisherman, the two ticket inspectors, and the dancer's manager (Pedro Armendáriz Jr.) all wind up on the Île d'Yeu -- please don't ask me why or how -- where things are sort of sorted out. It's goofy French nonsense in Rozier's style, which amounts to dreaming up an assortment of characters and a situation to put them in, and seeing what comes of it. I have a bit of resistance to this approach to filmmaking but I have to admit that I found myself laughing out loud once or twice.    

The Castaways of Turtle Island (Jacques Rozier, 1976)

Jacques Villeret and Pierre Richard in The Castaways of Turtle Island

Cast: Pierre Richard, Jacques Villeret, Maurice Risch, René Gros, Bernard Dumaine, Lise Guicheron, Bernadette Palas, Maryse Viscard, Cléa de Oliveira, Alain Sarde, Jean François Balmer, Arlette Emmery. Screenplay: Jacques Rozier. Cinematography: Colin Mounier. Film editing: Jacques Rozier, Françoise Thévenot. Music: Dorival Caymmi, Nana Vasconcelos. 

The castaways of Jacques Rozier's satire on tourism don't know what they're in for, and frankly neither did I. The Castaways of Turtle Island is a grand muddle of a movie, starting with one plot line and then dropping it entirely for the main one: Two disgruntled employees at a tourist agency come up with the idea of offering something for the new breed of adventure tourist. They will find a desert island and drop their clients off there with no amenities, leaving them to fend for themselves in the manner of Robinson Crusoe. (The film was made 25 years before Survivor.) If you can endure 145 minutes of aimless humor and enigmatic characters, it's worth a watch, and at least the scenery is often lovely. But it failed to find an audience when it was originally released in France, and it's easy to see why.
 

Near Orouët (Jacques Rozier, 1971)

Cast: Caroline Cartier, Danièle Croisy, Françoise Guégan, Patrick Verde, Bernard Menez. Screenplay: Jacques Rozier. Cinematography: Colin Mounier. Film editing: Odile Faillot, Jacques Rozier. Music: Daevid Allen, Gong, Gilli Smyth.

Jacques Rozier's Near Orouët is about the summer vacation of three young women on the Atlantic near the village of Orouët, the name of which (pronounced with a final T) seems to set these Parisians into fits of giggles -- but then almost everything does. This is a giddy account of nothing more than their summer of sunning, eating, drinking, sailing, horseback riding, flirting with one young man, and tormenting another. The tormented one is Gilbert (Bernard Menez) who during the rest of the year works in a small office as the supervisor of one of the women, Joëlle (Danièle). Obviously smitten, he shows up uninvited after learning where she is vacationing, but his attempt to ingratiate himself with her and her friends is thwarted by the arrival of a more handsome and self-possessed young man, Patrick (Patrick Verde), who has a sailboat. The film is a trifle, one of those movies that expect you to enjoy getting to know the characters. But it's also two and a half hours long, so by the time it ends you may have become better acquainted with the three young women than you wanted to be. 

Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier, 1962)

Cast: Jean-Claude Aimini, Stefania Sabatini, Yveline Céry, Daniel Descamps, Vittorio Caprioli, David Tonelli, André Tarroux, Christian Longuet, Michel Soyet, Arlette Gilbert, Maurice Garre. Screenplay: Michèle O'Glor, Jacques Rozier. Cinematography: René Mathelin. Film editing: Monique Bonnot, Claude Durand, Marc Pavaux. Music: Jacques Denjean, Paul Mattei, Maxime Saury. 

The Nouvelle Vague loved its threesomes, but the dynamic in Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine is different from the more famous ones in François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962) and Jean-Luc Godard's Bande à Part (1962). Instead of two men and one woman, Rozier gives us two women and one man. Otherwise, it walks the same sexual tightrope, juggling the same ideas about what it means to be free in a world that seems determined to stifle that freedom.