Feature film
Les Petites Fugues
Yves Yersin · 1979
Synopsis
Pipe has been a farmhand for some thirty years with the Duperrex family, in the countryside of the canton of Vaud. On reaching retirement age, he buys himself a moped with his old-age pension, to the family's astonishment. Luigi, a young Italian seasonal worker, teaches him as best he can to ride it, and Pipe begins to roam the surrounding countryside, farther and farther. Then a camera enters his life, and the man who never said anything discovers that he can look at the world.
Context
Yersin wrote the screenplay with Claude Muret and edited the film himself; Robert Boner produced it for the Filmkollektiv of Zurich, with French partners. Robert Alazraki was responsible for the image, Léon Francioli and Guillermo Villegas for the music. The French actor Michel Robin plays Pipe, with Fred Personne, Mista Préchac and Dore De Rosa. The film was released in Switzerland in February 1979, in France in September, and a print was rereleased there in December 2014.
Who it is for
A little over two hours and a quarter. It is worth knowing that the narrative takes the time of its character, and that nothing happens other than what happens to him.
Prizes and reception
Some 425,000 admissions in Switzerland in 1979, one of the greatest successes of Swiss cinema; presented in Un certain regard at Cannes the same year.
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