Synopsis   Cast

Small escapes

[original title:  Les petites fugues]

Switzerland 1979. 35, colour, 145 min.
 

Pipe, an elderly farmworker, experiences an exemplary transformation during 30 years of work on the same farm. The film shows how he buys a small motor-cycle, and how this small step represents the beginning of his liberation from his dependence and submission, and the development of independence and an autonomous existence. The film also describes, by way of contrast, a critical phase in the life of the farm and the Duperrex family, Pipe's employers - a period of crisis, change, and the overthrowal of accepted values. Pipe's individual destiny upsets and disturbs the normal life of the farm to an ever-increasing degree, and his experiences threaten to jeopardize the members of the group to which he belongs. Symbolically, the film describes a possible journey into the future which has all the appearances of desirability: independence.

Synopsis   Cast