I firmly believe this is a well made film, and the succession of humiliations in a Summer camp for boys is shown at times in gruelling detail. Male nudity is explicit, and both Dewaere and Bouchitey give excellent performances. It says a lot for the homophobia of the times in France that the latter actor was not given as good as, or arguably better, roles afterwards. I do not want to go too much into the tragic death of Dewaere, except to ask why was he driven to the act? A man can be driven to suicide, and the reasons are not clear. I want to pay attention to what I see on the screen. Everyone has their own vision of what is there, and what I see in 'La meilleure facon de marcher' is a murky display of ambiguity. My conclusion after watching this film twice in one go (I had not seen it for decades) is that the ambiguity of sexuality and sado-masochism is Claude Miller's avoidance of facing (to me) the obvious. Both persecutor and persecuted are playing cat and mouse with their homosexuality and the battlefield of their relationship is a mutual fear of 'coming out'. This was a mainstream film. Gay/Queer cinema was thin on the ground in the 1970's, and because of that, the 'suspense' on the screen is manufactured to put the audience more at ease with the subject matter. The ending is implausible and neatly wraps the whole thing up with a totally false albeit ambiguous sense of an odd sort of 'normality'. That is what I see on the screen, and frankly it let in a little fresh air on so called deviation from the norm, but not enough to make the audiences in the Champs-Elysees cinemas feel threatened or insecure. The scenario of the film is like Salome's dance of the seven veils, and shedding two of them is quite enough, thank you. The great Bruno Nuytten and his camera does well, but for me was too soft focused. A 5 for the film's intensity, despite the gaping hole of truth at the centre.
Review of La meilleure façon de marcher
