Les Routes du sud (1978)
Directed by Joseph Losey

Film Review

Director Joseph Losey followed his critically acclaimed wartime drama Monsieur Klein (1976) with this more modest piece set on the eve of President Franco's death in 1975. It is a film that invites us to contemplate the virtues or otherwise of political struggle when the desired outcome is a certainty whatever action is taken. It raises interesting philosophical questions - for example, if Hitler had triumphed in WWII would his Fascist regime have naturally collapsed within a few decades with minimal loss of life, as the Soviet Union did in the late 1980s? The film is to some extent a continuation of the themes of Losey's previous The Assassination of Trotsky (1972), but it more naturally follows on from Alain Resnais's La Guerre est finie (1966), not least because it was scripted by the same writer, Jorge Semprún, and features the same lead actor, Yves Montand, both politically engaged individuals who were fervent opponents of Franco's regime.

Les Routes du sud is one of Losey's last films and shows little of the directorial panache of his earlier work, which includes The Go-Between (1970) and The Servant (1963). In fact, it is a mostly plodding piece which struggles to engage with its subject matter - even Semprún himself described it as a 'half-failure'. A victim of McCarthyism, forced into exile in Europe to continue his filmmaking career, Joseph Losey has much in common with the central protagonist played by Montand, a political exile living in France, but he appears far from enthused by the subject and it is considered one of his weaker films.

Film Synopsis

It is 1975.  The Spanish dictator Franco is dying, but his regime still holds on to power.  Amongst those who support the communist resistance against Franco are Jean and Eve, exiles living in France.  The couple are enjoying a holiday with their twenty-something son Laurent when Eve is called to Spain to participate in some clandestine activity.  This creates friction between Jean and Laurent, the latter vehemently criticising his father for adhering what he sees as a futile cause.  Their relationship worsens when Eve is subsequent reported to have been killed in a road accident...