Les naufragés de la D17 (2002) User Reviews

Unusual comedy with an original look and feel

[myriamlenys · 6/10 · 21 January 2024]

"Les naufragés de la D17" deals with a lot of people moving around in what is normally one of the quietest, most isolated regions of France. The connective thread seems to be the adventures of a pair of rally drivers, consisting of an older male pilot and his young female co-pilot. A dictatorial egotist, the driver treats his companion as a cross between a scapegoat and a skivvy. Other characters include a female astronomer who lusts after a strapping shepherd, a European Union-hating farmer who uses a pair of cows for car towing, and a paranoid military officer who sees Iraqi soldiers everywhere.

As to this Gulf War theme : please don't ask me why the story was set in 1991, I haven't got a clue. If the scandal sheets are to be believed large parts of the artistic community do not breakfast on coffee and pancakes, but on something stronger.

"Les naufragés" has a very original look, which owes a lot to the contrast between the spare, austere beauty of the landscape on the one hand and the messy shenanigans of the humans on the other. The plot is loosely constructed and many of the storylines have an absurd, almost surreal feel. One could easily believe that developments are made up on the spot. ("All right, mes enfants, time to vote ! What is the character going to do next, sleep in the open air or sleep under somebody's roof ?" "Under somebody's roof !" "Under somebody's roof !" "Yes !" "I'm counting the hands... That's it, the character is going to sleep under somebody's roof. Georges, can you write us a little scene ?")

Not all of the actors seem to be on the same page. For instance, the paranoid officer is far more caricatural than the long-suffering co-driver. The ending comes out of the blue and contradicts pretty much everything that had gone before. Still, viewers who appreciate the more freewheeling, haphazard kind of humor can find something to giggle at or to smile about. I'm giving the movie five stars, with another one added for an excellent joke about a geologist. Well, how many comedies do you know that contain an excellent joke about a geologist ?

All this and the Gulf War too.

[ulicknormanowen · 8/10 · 30 June 2023]

Funny comedy which spares nobody from the car rallies to the military to the astronomers to the movie-makers ; only the nature and people living in the Alpes de Haute Provence escape unharmed .

It takes place in the first five days of the Gulf War which may seem irrelevant but which inspires a sergeant's psychosis. In the splendid landscapes ,intruders are not the wecome (scene of the telephone) ; Bouchitey is marvelous as a macho rally driver who makes his female team mate slave away while lazily sitting in his precious car ; a sergeant is convinced that in these mountains ,Saddam Hussein hides secret forces (hence the hints at the Gulf War); it's a real psychosis which leads him to urge his men to wage an imaginary war ; a director and his actors are filming a cheap western in the place (the so called Indians and their wigs ) and the officer mistakes them for spies in the pay of Hussein .an astronomer is more interested in the stars than in love with his wife who finds solace with a shepherd ...whose she-goat has eaten a cassette the rally competitors need.

Once a cahiers du cinema critic , Luc Moullet turns back from the N. W. precepts and makes an entertaining movie, a shaggy-dog story , in a quiet place where to see two cars in a row is quite an event.