Roadies

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

COCKTAIL MOLOTOV Directed and Written by Diane Kurys

VOYAGE EN DOUCE Directed and Written by Michel Deville

Around the time they discovered blue jeans, Europeans discovered another American invention, the open road, and gave the genre some local twists, such as the persistence of class conceits. Bertrand Blier (Going Places) and Wim Wenders (Kings of the Road) established the itinerary; now Diane Kurys, whose Peppermint Soda took a fresh, funny look at growing up Jewish in Paris, follows that road. Cocktail Molotov is set in May 1968, when French students and workers virtually shut down their country. Alas for Anne (Elise Caron), that is the moment she chooses to defy her bourgeois mother and take off with her lower-class lover Frederic (Philippe Lebas) and his friend (Franc,ois Cluzet). The trio have a vague plan: they will ship out from Venice and find happiness on a kibbutz in Israel.

Reality, of course, intrudes, in the form of stolen luggage and passports, Anne's pregnancy and the pull of events taking place back in Paris. Most of the film is devoted not to the young people's efforts at escape, but to their attempt to return and link up with what seems to them a generational rite of passage. That is original, and Director Kurys has a shrewd and sympathetic eye for adolescent foibles. In Caron the director has found a youngster who, though she has never acted before, has vulnerability and intelligence. Still the film seems inconsequential. Anne and her friends learn a few things and grow up a notch or two, the way people always do in stories of this kind. C'est la vie, c'est l'ennui.

Voyage en Douce insinuates itself much more memorably into one's mind. In it, two women who may well have taken part in the events of 1968 attempt to come to grips with the issues of grownup existence. Lucie (Geraldine Chaplin) is slightly the older, and definitely the less stable. Helene (Dominique Sanda) discovers her on her doorstep when she returns from a concert. Lucie is leaving her husband because he has imaginary affairs and permits their dog to watch them making love. These may not be grounds for divorce, but they do indicate that a change of scene is in order. Since Helene is off to look at vacation homes, she takes her friend on the expedition.

Through several days of house hunting they reminisce and fantasize about their love lives. These incidents include everything from casual encounters (both successful and not) to rapes. It is impossible to determine which ones are true, which are entirely fanciful and which are a little of both. Some are ironic, many are wistful. The exchange of confidences between two women who have known each other since school days leads to a deepening of their relationship that is very moving. As they become more open with each other emotionally, they become more open physically. This does not lead to a lesbian encounter, but it does give the film a distinct erotic charge.

It would, however, be wrong to suggest that this graceful, lyrical film is just a tease. Voyage en Douce is about longing -- for sexual connections that are some thing other than briefly poignant or lengthily quotidian. There is a real feeling of regret when the two women complete their voyage en douce and return to their separate lives.

-- By Richard Schickel

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