dbdumonteil
Beware with the title of this movie! It isn't a western at all. Besides, French westerns don't exist. It's just a road-movie. Unlike to the USA, France isn't really specialized with this kind of movie. Nevertheless, I think that the few French road-movies can rival their American fellows. "Western" ranks among them and it's with this movie that Manuel Poirier went down in history by imposing his talent to the general public.Like in a major part of road-movies, what interests the film-maker is the behavior and especially the evolution of his character(s). Here, in the very beginning of this movie, nothing can anticipate a friendship between the two main characters. However, as the movie goes along, by traveling the country, they learn to know each other. Poirier makes his two main actors nice and at the end, if Paco failed to win Marinette's love, he could gain the friendship and the comfort of his partner.But "Western" is also an occasion for Poirier to take a realistic and sometimes ironical look on the France of the nineties, especially through Baptiste's zany game: "Bonjour, la France".The only fault of this movie is that sometimes it drags on due to tiresome and a little pointless sequences that bring really nothing to the movie. But if you take away this fault, "Western" is a successful road-movie where you find again the omnipresence of the country, a landscape dear to Poirier.
franco
I am not usually very fond of French movies but for reasons I cannot describe too well, this movie was very appealing to me. Although it is very French (it's located in Bretagne west of France) in its context, the idea of the movie is universal. It's about friendship and meeting and seducing women. The events are according to me unrealistic and mostly improbable. I live in Europe and know for a fact that having women and relationships are not as easy as they are portrayed in the movie but we would wish them to be.this makes the movie a kind of fantasy fulfillments tinged with streaks of reality throughout. In the lonely and grey countryside, inside anonymous houses, could one find love and happiness? Whenever I pass a house wherever it is located I'd think `could the woman of my life be inside that strange place that I pass by and will soon forget? If you don't really understand what' I'm saying go watch `Western' and you'll know. It will surely make you feel good.
tom.ridgway
Poirier's film is as good a study of loneliness as anything you're likely to see. (PT Anderson's Magnolia is on the same level.) Nino's search for love is heartbreaking and, the film uses all its various scenes to underline how loneliness affects everything the characters do. The men wander, but the film doesn't.Western is gentle, delicate, and touching--and manages to avoid any sentimentality. In other words, a rare gem.
Jasper-12
With such a great concept as two guys hitching around France seducing women and getting into various scrapes, you'd wonder how you could go wrong, but despite its moments, this comes across as a rather half-baked affair, of interest mainly due to some impressive acting and the way they've made use of an obviously miniscule budget. The main problem is in its arbitrary plotting, which consists of a number of lengthy sequences, the majority of which seem to have no evident role within any larger narrative arc, and at times seeming like they are just there to make up time. Some of these scenes are impressive in their own right (the double-date dinner party, and the game of 'Bonjour a la France'), but it soon becomes apparent that the film is going absolutely nowhere. That's not to say that the scenery along the way isn't impressive, and the repartee between our two protagonists is generally amusing.
AD
