Film Review
Nous n'irons plus au bois was the first film directed by Yvan Govar,
a low-budget Belgian production that Govar financed with money provided
by his well-heeled parents, Jean Govaerts (a successful painter) and Nelly
Van Kelekom, who ran a thriving art gallery in Ostend. Govar was only
nineteen when he made the film, having turned his back on a promising acting
career after three years with the famous Renaud-Barrault theatre company
in Paris. Filmed on 16mm film with an inexperienced cast and crew,
Govar's debut piece has a casual roughness and amateurishness to it that
makes it resemble one of the early films of the French New Wave (the similarities
with Claude Chabrol's
Le Beau Serge,
Truffaut's
Les 400 coups
and Jean-Luc Godard's
À
bout de souffle are as striking as they are uncanny), but there is
also a potent and very distinctive charm, a stark and bitter lyricism that
would manifest itself in all of Govar's subsequent films.
Govar gives away the entire plot with a notice of a
faits divers right
at the start of the film, and in doing so he accentuates the impression of
fatalistic doom that pursues the hero as he tries and fails to make a new
life for himself. Yan may have served his time (after killing his wicked
stepmother), but no one seems willing to give him a second chance, and, through
a strange set of circumstances that somehow combine Grimms' fairytale and
even grimmer film noir, he ends up losing the only friend he has left and
kills a second time - with an outcome that is as horrific as it is totally
predictable. Sympathetically portrayed by Jacques Sempey (a Jérémie
Renier look-a-like), Yan is indelibly presented to us as the child-like innocent,
forever excluded from a world that is too quick to judge others whilst being
completely blind to its own sickening venality. (In this respect the
film has a strong resonance with Robert Bresson's
Mouchette, made 12 years later).
Even the one friend Yan thought he could count on (a kind-hearted farmer
played by Govar himself) turns out to be as rotten as the rest, reminding
us that friendship, like the beauty of the femme fatale who sends Yan plunging
to his doom, is often only skin deep, and sometimes viciously treacherous.
Nous n'irons plus au bois is by no means a polished production, and
it is ludicrous to expect it to be such. Govar's talents shine through
the film's obvious imperfections and there are more than a few inspired touches
to make up for the occasional mishaps. It is hard not to be struck
by how unrelentingly oppressive the film is - the Flanders setting is imbued
with a menace and melancholy that gradually intensify as the drama builds
to its gruesome climax. Equally, you cannot help but feel Yan's increasing
sense of alienation from a world that refuses to take him back after his
fall from grace. The symbolism of the final shot - the young outcast
slain by the mob whilst clinging to a tree - is crude but incredibly apt.
After this promising debut, Govar used up his remaining financial resources
on his first two features -
Le Toubib, médecin du gang (1955)
and
Le Circuit de minuit (1956) - both interesting films in their
own right but neither succeeded in engaging the critics or audiences.
Govar's career as an independent film producer was then over, but he would
make five further commercial films in France - the highpoint being
La Croix des vivants
(1962) - before lack of recognition drove him to give up filmmaking for good.
Considered by some to be an auteur ahead of his time, by others a
cinéaste
maudit, Govar has acquired a cult following since his premature death
in 1988.
Nous n'irons plus au bois isn't only an excellent
introduction to his work, it also feels like an allegory of his future career
as a filmmaker. In the person of Yan, the man no one can accept and
who is finally driven away by the unthinking prejudiced rabble, Govar paints
a self-portrait that is frighteningly pescient.
© James Travers 2016
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Leaving a juvenile detention centre after serving a term for the accidental
killing of his stepmother, Yan makes his way across country to his home village
in Flanders, eager to make a fresh start. His father will have nothing
more to do with him, and neither will most of the friends and neighbours he
once knew. The only friend he can count on now is Gus, a young
farmer who offers him work and a place to stay, a little shack in the woods.
Whilst dreaming of his ideal woman, Yan unwittingly attracts the attention
of Maria, Gus's promiscuous girlfriend. When Gus finds out that Yan
and Maria have been seeing each other behind his back he is consumed with
jealousy and brings an abrupt end to their friendship. It is Yan that
Maria prefers, but as she urges him to elope with her he strikes out and
she falls to the ground, hitting her head on a rock. Realising that
he has killed a second time, Yan takes flight. Acting as if they have
a crazed murderer in their midst, Gus and the other villagers band together
and go chasing after Yan, determined to hunt him to his death...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.