The Departure

1967 [FRENCH]

Comedy / Drama / Romance

2
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 63% · 2 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 63%
IMDb Rating 6.4/10 10 1220 1.2K

car race car mechanic belgium porsche

Plot summary

A young Belgian car nut and hairdresser's apprentice attempts to get a Porsche by all means for his nearing debut race and meets a girl in the same time.

720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
782.78 MB
1280*764
French 2.0
NR
Subtitles us   fr   hu   ro   es  
25 fps
1 hr 25 min
Seeds 1
1.42 GB
1808*1080
French 2.0
NR
Subtitles us   fr   hu   ro   es  
25 fps
1 hr 25 min
Seeds 4

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by jlabine

Voom! Voom!

Jerzy Skolimowski's 1967 obscure New Wave comedy-drama is a must find for Jean Pierre Leaud fans. Though I'm not sure how many are out there, outside of myself? The movie opens with Marc (Leaud) borrowing (more like joyriding) a Porsche, and continuing through the rest of the film trying to get a car to join a Belgian car race. By day he works as a beautician and dreams of racing. But along the way he meets up with Michele (Catherine Duport) and she assists with helping Marc find a car (or at least forget about the race). The story is actually about Marc and Michele, and Marc's inability to be sexually physical or emotionally available to Michelle. I'm not quite sure if it's due to immaturity or if it's something else. But his character reminds me a little of Michael (John Moulder Brown) from Skolimowski's later film "Deep End" (1970) Both are impotent in emotional and sexual contact, when it comes down to making love with their potential partners. Both characters view things in a childish but surreal manner. "Le Depart" contains a scene in which Marc and Michele are in a car (that's on display at a car show) that splits in half allowing both passengers to be seated in the car to look at each other, but not able to touch (being that Marc refuses to let go of his childish notion to car race, the car is now what splits them apart). In "Deep End" Michael falls into the water after quarreling with some boys over Susan (Jane Asher) and underwater, he views a naked woman swimming underneath him. Again both films represent the out of reach sexual fantasy. Marc play with cars, and Michael sucks his thumb and has temper-tantrums. Both are boys, that have refused to give up a part of their childish ways, to make them free to live in a more mature sexually adult world. The difference in both are in the endings. Where Marc is able to forget about his notions of racing, and commit to Michele in a sexual way. Michael's fight to remain in his younger state, has sabotaged Susan's life in an explosive accident. Jerzy Skolimowski is trully an unrecognized director that deserves much more. Some of the greatest films of the late sixties to the late seventies were directed by him ("Le Depart", "Deep End", and "The Shout"). Unfortunaely he goes unnoticed. If anyone can find this film, I recommend it. Funnily, I noticed that there wasn't much dialog in the film. Later I was to read that Polish director Skolimowski doesn't speak French at all, though it was filmed in Belgian. That must have been fun to direct? Highly recommended! The burning up of the film negative was a great closing!
Reviewed by Bunuel1976 6 / 10

LE DEPART (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1967) **1/2

Skolimowski's first film after leaving Poland (following a ban imposed on his political allegory HANDS UP! [1967; released 1981]) - has an air of inconsequentiality about it which was also evident in his earlier work but, lacking those films' socio-political resonance, it comes across as rather pointless - if not without merit and charm. Still, despite the fact that it features one of the defining faces of the Nouvelle Vague in Jean-Pierre Leaud, the film doesn't feel French at all - and this is augmented by the typical strains of Krzysztof Komeda's score.The leads (Leaud and Catherine Dupont) are engaging and the film amusing (particularly the numerous scenes in which Leaud gets into a scuffle), and seems to have been partly improvised (for instance, the mirror sequence that's tinged with surrealism). Racing-cars aren't my cup of tea but Skolimowski and Leaud manage to capture the mind-set of a fanatic on the subject.Basically, it boils down to being a dreamer's wish-fulfillment fantasy - which, as often happens in cinema, is never achieved; indeed in the end, just when our hero (who is driven to committing both fraud and theft to satisfy his passion!) seems about to make it, he gives everything up for no apparent reason!
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