Director: Denis Imbert (France). Year of Release: 2023
A hospital bed, where Pierre lies with a bloody face, unable to open one of his eyes. He is clearly damaged, as we gradually learn, from a fall from great height whil under the influence. Pierre has vowed never to drink again. Instead, he is going to walk across France. This dismays Pierre’s publisher, who would prefer that his famous author client would write something about his distressing accident. Besides which, he’ll be walking 1000km. No, says Pierre. It’s more like 1300.
We’re barely 5 minutes into the film and we have a motivation, a likeable character and a possible plot trajectory. Pierre must get from A to B. His path means that he will meet people on the way, and – who knows – maybe socially interact them. Also, as Pierre we have Oscar winner Jean Dujardin, who is never less than charming. On the other hand, this is a fairly typical road movie plot which does little different to a thousand films before it.
Pierre starts his tour in the French mountains, accompanied by sticks which he holds in each hand to maintain his balance. Sometimes, he must scramble uphill through a rocky path, sometimes he tumbles to the ground, but there is little sense of dramatic tension, we rarely think that Pierre won’t make it, even after he’s rushed to hospital. Instead we watch him relentlessly making his way through (admittedly beautiful) French countryside to his inevitable destination.
Pierre walks mainly alone, but occasionally he is joined by others. On one occasion, when he falls to the ground, he is rescued by someone who accompanies him for the next couple of days. When Pierre says that their paths must diverge, his new companion looks slightly disappointed. But Pierre is single-minded enough to carry on, and welcome fellow travellers – like an old friend and his sister who later accompany him – without requiring their presence.
This occasional accompaniment restricts our insight into Pierre’s character. Is he basically antisocial? Well, not obviously, as he seems to welcome the people who walk alongside him. Maybe this is normal, but if I’d been walking for a long time on my own, I’d be deeply irritated by someone who decides he wants to walk alongside me, and interminably chatter. Pierre takes all this in his stride. We get no insight whether this sort of thing annoy him.
Pierre’s walk is intermingled with memories from his past. We see him arrive at a party on a third floor room by shinning up a drainpipe. This is not the scene of the accident, it’s just what he does. A relationship develops with Anna, who first attends a book reading and tentatively asks Pierre to sign her newly purchased book. Pierre flirts shamelessly with her, and it’s not long before we see both of them in bed. Later, we see the couple canoodle at parties, and even later they fall apart.
Pierre has vague plans to get out of the rat race. In voice overdubs, we hear that he wants to “escape the machinery of the city and the imprisonment of dead computer screens.” But it is far from clear what exactly he means by this. Is Pierre part of a reactionary “back to nature” cult, which wants us to return to using abacuses, or is he just trying to come to terms with the exhaustion of permanent alienation? It is never really clear.
At one time during the walk, Pierre experiences an epileptic attack. Fortunately, at the time, he is accompanied by a friend who calls an ambulance. The doctors in the hospital warn Pierre that he should be taking his medicines without explicitly telling him to stop his walk. He proudly carries on, without any medicines. What could have been a moment of deep dramatic tension is trivialised by Pierre’s apparent invincibility. Of course he will survive. It isn’t that sort of film.
I guess the inevitability is reinforced if you know that this is based on an autobiographical novel by Sylvain Tesson. After a while, as the number of kilometres walked ticks off on the screen, it becomes just one thing after another. By the time Pierre reaches the sea and Mont Saint-Michel, you think this is a fitting place to end. Then you see the on sceeen distance counter and you realise that we’ve still got over 100km to go.
There are moments of occasional apparent profundity. A voiceover tells us the notes that Pierre is writing down, presumably for inclusion in a future book. Citing Napoleon, he says that there are two sorts of people in the world – those who give orders, and those who obey. He pauses a minute, and adds that there’s a third type – those who flee. It all sounds very nice and has a balanced tone, but does it actually mean anything?
When we get to the final revelation, the scene which shows how Pierre got the injuries which we see at the start of the film. It is a complete anticlimax. It is almost as if I could recount the scene as it contains absolutely no plot spoilers. We know what is going to happen, and this happens just as expected. This is a great shame, as there was a great opportunity to fill this scene with dramatic tension, but it all just passes with a whimper. Besides which, the fall is also in the trailer.
There is nothing bad about Auf dem Weg, and Jean Dujardin looks like the sort of bloke that you’d enjoy spending time with. At the same time, nothing happens which might scare the horses. There is absolutely no jeapordy. A man starts walking through the mountains, and carries on until he reaches the other side. Which sounds like a fine film to accompany a lazy Sunday afternoon. Less so, in the middle of the week, when you’d like to engage with something.
CinePhil 