English Title: The Grand Highway/The Long Path
Director: Jean-Loup Hubert
1987
Coming of Age/Comedy/Drama
Running Time: 1hr 47mins
Cert: 15
French with English Subtitles
“A charming, bitter-sweet coming of age drama captured brilliantly with a minimum of sentimentality, played out by a remarkable childhood double-act”
Louis is nine and lives in Paris. He spends his summer holiday in a small town in Brittany. His mother Claire has lodged him with her girlfriend Marcelle and her husband Pelo while she’s having her second baby. There Louis makes friends with Martine, the ten-year- old girl next door, who teaches him lessons in life.
Like Alice In Wonderland, Louis has crossed the threshold into another world, the adult world that is corrupt, flawed and terrifying, and from which he cannot return. The film portrays life as a mix of comedy and tragedy in equal measure, while all the time maintaing a sense of realism, which enchants its audience.
