Le Grand Chemin (The Grand Highway)
Louis (Antoine Hubert) an eight-year-old Parisian boy is taken by his pregnant mother (who has been deserted by her husband) to her old girlfriend in the country in Brittany where the friend can watch her son for the 3 weeks it will probably take before her new child is born.
The boy is very reluctant to be left with strangers but he has no choice. Along comes Martine (Vanessa Guedj) a 10 1/2- year-old bombshell of a country girl to take him in hand and explain everything a young boy should know. "Like to see a girl's wee wee?" she asks. "Oui, oui," he replies . . . or should have. She takes him to a hayloft where they watch her nude sister and fiance roll in the hay. "Why does her sister do it?" Louis wonders, as he listens to her moaning which he interprets as pain?
As in MY LIFE AS A DOG, AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS, and HOPE AND GLORY, and many many more, this movie is about children growing up, learning about life and having to deal with it as each new wonder arises, with the director telling the true story as he remembers it.
Le Grand Chemin will enchant you. Every word the young girl utters is outrageously funny; her every action (from lifting up her dress to expose herself to the back of a priest, to her climbing the church roof to urinate down the drain so that the gargoyle's mouth spouts the urine onto a passing nun) is hilarious.
Also in the cast are Christine Pascal and Anemone.
The French, like the italians, deal with their religion, nuns, priests, church, God, heaven with humor. Unlike in the U.S., they feel that a priest is only a human doing his best in his chosen field and not an angel sent by a mysterious God. They are more up tight about violence than they are about sex.
In French with English subtitles.
Directed by Jean-Louis Hubert, the real-life father of Antoine.
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Copyright 1988 Ben Hoffman
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