Les Dernières vacances (1948) - film review

For generations, the Torrignes family have lived in a splendid old house in the south of France.  By the early 1930s, the family’s fortune has dried up and there is no other recourse than to sell the house.  The present occupants are the widower and amateur photographer Walter Lherminier, his 16-year old daughter Juliette, and his elderly spinster sister Délie.  For the last time, they invite the other members of the family to the house so that they can spend one last summer together.  Walter’s nephew, Jacques, is the same age as Juliette and soon realises that he is in love with her.  The harmonious family reunion looks as if it may be ruined by the arrival of an architect, Pierre Gabard, who has come to inspect the house prior to its sale.  When he sees Pierre getting friendly with Juliette, Jacques is incensed and makes plans to drive him away…

Les Dernières vacances was the first of only two full-length films to be directed by the writer and critic Roger Leenhardt (the other being the 1961 film Le Rendez-vous de minuit).  An auteur in the truest sense of the word, Leenhardt has an approach to film-making which is very suggestive of the French New Wave of the late 1950s, early 1960s.  This is most apparent in his collection of short films, made between 1951 and 1977, but it can also be seen in his full-length films.

A surprisingly modern film for its time, Les Dernières vacances uses extensive location filming (in the Gard region of France) to great effect and a naturalistic style which is very distinctive, evoking a strange sense of wistful nostalgia.  The break up of a family through the sale of their house serves as an appropriate metaphor for the film’s main premise, the loss of one’s childhood and the brutal, sudden arrival of adulthood.  The awkward teenage romance is beautifully and subtly played by Odile Versois and Michel François, the latter being an obvious forerunner of Antoine Doinel, the rebellious hero of Truffaut’s Les 400 coups (1959).

© James Travers 2007

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