SUBJECTS

Fugitives from justice -- Switzerland -- Drama, Hitchhiking -- Switzerland -- Drama, Young women -- Switzerland -- Drama

Messidor

featuring

Clementine Amouroux, Catherine Retore,

Two young women hit Switzerland’s not-so-wide-open roads in Tanner’s fittingly claustrophobic road movie, a deeply pessimistic vision of social restriction that’s more proto–riot grrrl than pre–Thelma and Louise in its—and its heroines’—fierceness. A college student and a shopgirl decide to start hitchhiking, and never stop, with a hard life on the run better than whatever life they’re escaping from. Postcard Switzerland, however, soon turns into an inescapable maze. Inspired by a true-crime story and taken over from French director Maurice Pialat, Messidor is no uplifting paean to freedom, but a testament to the grueling relentlessness of having everywhere to go, but nowhere to stay.

Jason Sanders
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Alain Tanner
Cinematographer
  • Renato Berta
Language
  • French
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • 35mm
  • 130 mins
Source
  • SWISS FILMS
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View Messidor documents  

Messidor (distributor materials), New Yorker Films, 1995

The films of Alain Tanner (distributor materials), New Yorker Films, 1993

Alain Tanner: a film poet between utopia and realism (monograph), Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Christian Dimitriu, 1991

Messidor (review), Film Journal International, Candace Burke-Block, 1981

Messidor (review), Soho Weekly News, Carlos Clarens, 1981

Messidor (review), Variety, Lenny Borger, 1981

Messidor (review), Variety, Lenny Borger, 1979

Messidor (program note)

Suisse chérie (review), Louis-Paul Favre

Messidor (flyer)

Displaying 10 of 12 publicly available documents.


View all Messidor documentation on CineFiles.