Le Voyage à Paimpol (1985)

Le Voyage à Paimpol is a French film comedy-drama first released in 1985, directed by John Berry.  The film stars Myriam Boyer, Michel Boujenah, Jean-François Garreaud, Dora Doll and Michèle Brousse.  It has also been released under the title: Voyage to Paimpol.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


Maryvonne’s dreams are a world apart from her daily reality.  Her life as a factory worker in a humdrum town receives a boost when she starts a romance with a young Arab co-worker, Joël.  Marriage and childbirth follow, but it’s not long before Maryvonne is once more stuck into a tedious routine.  Whilst she and her colleagues are taking strike action against impending redundancies, she meets a handsome young journalist, who encourages her to take up writing.  Not realising her admirer’s real motives, Maryvonne rises to the challenge, giving free rein to her imagination.  But is she living just another fantasy…?

Le Voyage à Paimpol is a strange, little-known film from American born director John Berry, one of a number of artists who fled the MacCarthy anti-communist persecution that was rampant in the States in the 1950s.  Freely mixing social issues and surreal fantasy, the film is unusual in that it features working class people in a realistic setting.   The main character’s flights of fantasy become increasingly bizarre as the film progresses – one minute she sees herself as a Russian princess sacrificing herself for the Russian Revolution, the next she is Joan of Arc – to the extent that the film feels painfully fragmented and a tad silly.  There are some wonderfully surreal moments, such as the scene where Maryvonne is parcelling up a copy of herself on the factory production line and another where she gives birth on the factory floor to the item she spends all day packaging.   Whilst it is not Berry’s best work, the film does offer an amusing take on the social issues that preoccupied many workers in France in the 1980s.


© James Travers 2006

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