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The Best Way to Walk

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"The Best Way To Walk", in French and directed by Claude Miller, stars Patric Dewaere as Marc and Patrick Bouchitey as Phillippe. These two men are counselors for a summer boys' camp somewhere in France. Marc coaches the boys in sports; Phillippe is a drama teacher. After catching Phillippe in women's clothes and makeup one evening, Marc proceeds to bully the gentler Phillippe at every turn. It soon becomes obvious that the bully is compensating for his own awakening sexual feelings that he would like to thwart. Much of the conflict in this quite successful movie has to do with the relationship or lack thereof between these two individuals.

Both men are extremely handsome, as is Christine Pascal who plays Phillippe's girlfriend. Phillippe in men's clothes looks for all the world like Audrey Hepburn. In the scene that brings the film to a boil, a costume party held at the end of the summer, Phillppee is dressed as a beautiful woman and looks even more like Hepburn. His dance with Marc, who is dressed as a matador in the obligatory skin-tight trousers, scorches the screen.

The movie is way ahead of its time-- it was released in the U. S. in 1976-- with its theme of same-sex attraction and is another example of what many French directors do so well. A great little find.

One of the most underrated films about sexual awakening--at least as affecting as anything Rohmer made--I first saw "The Best Way to Walk" when it played at a local art-house theater. To my impressionable young mind it seemed scarier than any horror flick. That a film could "go there" the way Claude Miller does seemed awe-inspiring, and painful. I've seen many films since then, but Miller's (his first independent of Truffaut) has lost none of it's edge.

Young might find "The Best Way to Walk" on a list of best gay-themed films, and yet it's not really about homosexual object-choice, a boy-meets-boy film as they're made these days. It plays as if it might be, but it's actually about comradeship; respect and its failure; about the politics of gender-identification; about disgust, sadism, and the need to be accepted. When it does finally turn into a film about desire, it does so in the form of a rather spectacular show-down.

"The Best Way to Walk" has no competition when it comes to treating these themes.

The DVD transfer is completely adequate.

Philippe (a doe-eyed, pouty Patrick Bouchitey) is the music/theater counselor in his father's summer camp. He's sensitive, bookish, intelligent, good looking maybe even a bit of a prig: in high school, the type of guy usually teased by the football team.
Marc (a charismatic Patrick Dewaere) is the football/sport coach at the camp who takes it upon himself to humiliate, tease, and even flirt with Philippe whenever he has the opportunity. Marc's motivation is never made completely clear but the situation between he and Phillipe can arguably be attributed to Marc's closeted homosexuality: you "hate" what you really "love" and so on. On the other hand, a case can be made for Marc being simply a bully and a jerk: maybe his father beat him or should have. The genius of the story is that you never know for sure.
Director Claude Miller ("Alias Betty") structures this simple, straightforward story with an acute eye towards spicing up even the smallest detail with the heady aroma of insinuation and subtext. Though we pretty much know where this story is going we are more than happy to ride it out with Miller and his excellent actors.
The tension, both sexual and psychological, between Phillipe and Marc is physically palpable: the screen crackles when these two go at each other and the denouement of this film is wise, thoughtful as well as profoundly exhilarating.

Dear Claude Miller,
We love you very very much. You helped us to see 'the dark side of the world'. Please do not leave us! Please try to tell us another 'dark' stories.