L'envol du marcheur

Departure: Paris, arrival: Bâle Between the two, a journey on foot through the depths of France. Daniel de Roulet spends three weeks decorticating what he sees and what he encounters. The vigorous monologue of the day turns into an imaginary dialogue during the night with another solitary traveller who made the same journey a quarter of a century later. Banlieues, farmers, the absence of cafés, and lush terrain are all to be found at the foot of the comic or despairing alps of the 19th century.A pudgy auteur, Daniel de Roulet evokes in this récit, without losing his breath, marvellous fragments of intimacy. Xavier Voirol's images, on the other hand, manage to punctuate the film with perspicacity and elegance.