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Dominican Rep. The Big Departure
- Original title
- Le grand départ
- Year
- 1972
- Running time
- 71 min.
- Country
France- Director
- Screenwriter
- Cast
-
- Cinematography
- Producer
- Genre
- Drama. Fantasy
- Synopsis
- The opening credits are spoken over pictures of an idyllic beachfront landscape--but then the camera pulls back to reveal those pictures as designs on a guy’s shirt. Said guy is watching footage of political demonstrations on his TV, while outside a weird dude in a cat mask rides by on a bike.
We follow the cat man into a bizarre fantasy universe presented in negative exposure that reverses color values (black is white and vice versa) and written words. The cat man steals a car and then picks up a young girl he promises to take to “Heaven.” Heaven turns out to be a country chateau inhabited by several more animal mask wearing weirdoes.
There’s also a hippie cult frolicking in the woods nearby. The cult’s leader is an intense English speaking guru who prophecies a “Grand Departure” that will liberate his followers from their Earthly concerns.
Somewhere in here we learn the cat man represents death, as everyone he meets dies soon afterward--if he doesn’t do the killing himself. An example of this occurs when he callously molests a woman on a country road and leaves her for dead.
The cat man winds up on a “raft of freedom” manned by the guru and his followers. The raft becomes a sort of interstellar flying carpet that whisks them all through the cosmos. The trip is fun at first, with the cultists frolicking and playing ball with the Earth(!), but it eventually degenerates into a mass orgy…and the film finally returns to normal exposure.- Movie Soulmates' ratings
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