La Meilleure Façon de marcher

To mark the 60th anniversary of the film monthly Positif, our festival programme will also include the feature film debut by Claude Miller (1942–2012). The following is an excerpt from a review written for Positif in the year of the film’s release (1975) by Fréderic Vitoux, today a member of the French Academy: “The film was inspired by a prickly memory from the director’s adolescence. The story is set in a summer camp at the beginning of the 1960s (when he was 18) and describes the tension between two camp leaders, Marc (Patrick Dewaere), a macho anti-intellectual with fascist leanings, and the more docile, artistically disposed Philippe (Patrick Bouchitey). When one day Marc catches Philippe wearing women’s clothes, he starts to torment and humiliate him repeatedly in front of his friends and fiancée. In the end, however, Philippe discovers a way to beat Marc at his own game, making the most of his feminine traits while he’s about it.... Using the oppressive experience from his youth, the filmmaker opens up our entire world, laying bare its hypocrisy, the pettiness of its prejudices, and its hidden racism.” (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)