On the Run (Cavale)---Trilogy Part 1

  

Directed and Written by Lucas Belvaux

 

Starring: Lucas Belvaux, Catherine Frot, Dominique Blanc, Ornella Muti and Gilbert Melki

 

Runtime: 117 Minutes

Unrated—Best for mature audiences—probably R rating

 

French with English sub-titles

 

 

Nominally the first in Lucas Belvaux’ remarkable trilogy that also includes “An Amazing Couple,” and “After the Life,” “On the Run” is the exciting and tragic story of an angry man whose world has passed him by.

 

Lucas Belvaux (Madam Bovary-1991) stars as Bruno Le Roux, dodging bullets in a prison breakout on the dark, damp streets in a city in France.  As he dodges the bullets, they strike the pavement with sparks and a wonderful, stinging sound that is typical of the great sound effects in all three films of the trilogy.  Lucas himself turns out to be quite the athlete in a few scenes, as well the mastermind behind the entire trilogy; directing and writing the entire five hours plus runtime for all three films.

 

“On the Run” is the story of an unreformed anarchist, European style, who was double-crossed by his comrades-in-arms and left to rot in prison.  Le Roux embodies all that is great and terrible about the social revolutionists of the late 60s and 70s.  On the good side, they were passionate and loyal to their cause to the very end; many gave their lives during the war protests and civil rights movements here in America.  But Le Roux is definitely not of the Martin Luther King stripe.  Rather, he is Weathermen to the bone.  Weapons and explosives are his stock-in-trade, and he is mighty mad that his supposed partners in the liberation of the world sold him up the river for more lucrative criminal endeavors.  Mad enough to kill.

 

He is broken out of prison by a man who turns out to be his only friend left in the world, and the friend is killed in the escape.  This leaves Le Roux alone in a world of his own, and not a very pretty one at that.  He is two characters at the same time, the passionate, clever and courageous liberator and the mumbling, obsessed socio-path planning his next blood-bath.  Even if he is a little unbalanced, we can’t help but appreciate the precision with which he has planned his getaway, and his hiding places (the latter apparently prepared years before by either him and/or his accomplice).  Hideaways in the forgotten corners of the big city.  Places, in the words of Paul Simon, where only the poorer people go.  Old, decrepit buildings that have outlived their usefulness and are just waiting for the wrecking ball.  Forgotten places for forgotten people.

 

He runs to his former partner and par-amour, who is married, has a child, and has entirely moved on from the revolution.  We share in his heartbreak as he realizes she has not only left him physically, but she, too, has abandoned all that they stood for.  His shoes click-clack on the hard pavement as he walks alone through the night.  The steel door on his abandoned garage clanks open and closed, sealing him off from the rest of the world, as his mind withdraws into insanity and his connection with his fellow human beings disappears.

 

Losing his love and ally, the clever Le Roux instinctively befriends a heroine addict who is mysteriously incapable of making her score.  She is frantic and sweating in the throes of withdrawal, but her supplier will not sell to her.  Why?  We don’t know in this movie, but we find out a little in the next, “An Amazing Couple,” and then we find out the rest of her story, as well as several other stories, in the last film, “After the Life.”  The role of the junkie, Agnès Manise, played by Dominique Blanc is the most powerful in the series, even more powerful than the role of Le Roux, apparently written by Belvaux for himself.  The only comparable role in other movies is that played by Ellen Burstyn in “Requiem for a Dream,” the most horrific film about drug addiction in wide circulation.  That is, perhaps, until this one.

 

If all these convoluted plots, told in three separate films, sounds like a strange way to tell a story, or a half-dozen stories, it is.  A most strange and amazing way to tell stories, Rashomon style, as in “Pulp Fiction.”  Or, perhaps, “Pulp Fiction” in three dimensions instead of one. 

 

No reviewer will be able (or will get the space) to fully describe how all of these inter-twined plots are gradually pieced together in the three films of the trilogy.  But, they are pieced together, and quite nicely.  In the case of  Agnès Manise, her role appears in all three films, played by Dominique Blanc in all cases.  She appears with Belvaux, also playing Le Roux, in all three films.  Also the stunning Ornella Muti as Cécile Costes, the rich and beautiful wife of a successful and absent minded businessman, appears in all three films, as do Catherine Frot, Patrick Descamps and Gilbert Melki.  All six players appear in all three films in identical make-up, identical roles and even (and this is the most amazing) identical scenes.

 

The fact that identical actors, roles, make-up, lines and scenes are used on at least three occasions in each of the three movies is somewhat remarkable.  But what elevates the effect to the fantastic is each story’s distinct identity from the others.  In fact, each story is even a completely different genre from the other.  The first being a crime drama, the second a light hearted romantic comedy and the third a melodrama of the most severe proportions.

 

We know almost nothing of Le Roux in the second movie, when he is hiding out under an assumed identity in the ski-chalet of the rich and beautiful Cécile Costes.  Nor do we know anything of Cécile’s funny misunderstanding about her husband’s whereabouts in the first movie.  The first movie is about Le Roux; the second about Costes.

 

Only in the third movie do all of the plots converge and reconcile for all six characters.  There will be few theatres that will have the nerve to show all three of these great movies together in one showing (as a group they won the French equivalent of the “Best Picture” Oscar---a back-to-back movie marathon of nearly six hours).  But even if only one is showing, don’t miss the chance to see it.  The rest will come out later on video, or perhaps another theatre will show them.  But one thing is for certain, each one is a gem in itself and as a group, they are simply without compare.