Suave and sophisticated Gallic thriller of the type that some sloppy-speaking critic can be counted on to label "Hitchcockian." Adapted from a novel by Georges Simenon, it recounts a nocturnal automobile outing -- a Parisian couple en route to join their children at summer camp in the Basque region -- that results in a breakdown of more than just the automobile (though that, too): if not quite a breakdown of civilization, as in Godard's Weekend, at least a breakdown of civility. The husband, strangely abstracted at first glance, begins to tank up for the trip on the sly -- whisky's his pleasure -- and continues on the road to refuel his tank under the scornful eye of his wife. (His insistence that it improves his driving, nip by nip, can hardly help but remind us of Princess Diana's French chauffeur on her last ride.) It becomes a bone of contention between them. And after the wife makes good on her promise to be gone when he returns to the car from his latest pit stop, the film turns into something of a chase and a hunt. It does not really begin to resemble a thriller, however, until the entrance of a hulking hitchhiker, hiding his left hand mysteriously in his pocket, whom we recognize well ahead of the muzzy protagonist to be the escaped convict we've been hearing about on the car radio. By any stretch of the imagination, the escaped convict is a facile device; and even if the imagination will compliantly stretch that far, it is apt to snap at the whopper of a coincidence that awaits at the dénouement. However that may be, the personal dynamics between the chug-a-lugging driver and the taciturn hitcher are never as compelling as those between the married couple. It may seem an odd sort of compliment to pay a thriller, that it's at its most thrilling when it least resembles a thriller. But that's a compliment to the individual film -- to its individuality -- not to the genre. Brilliantly photographed by Patrick Blossier -- with atmospheric, authoritative shots of Paris streets, outlying freeways, country roads, roadside bars -- the film retains its full beauty even when it loses some of its credibility. Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Carole Bouquet, Vincent Deniard; directed by Cédric Kahn. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
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