Robert Enrico’s Les aventuriers is a
consistently fresh and unpredictable pleasure, its surprises spanning the film’s
tone, pacing, narrative construction, the behaviour of its characters and,
well, just about everything. As if in response to a write-this-if-you-can challenge, it starts with a
woman (Laetitia, played by Joanna Shimkus) rummaging through a scrap yard; she
soon crosses paths with the owner Roland (Lino Ventura) and his best friend/collaborator/fellow
dreamer Manu (Alain Delon), the three soon coming to form a loose trio (the
film establishes the deep importance of these connections while gently
side-stepping conventional sexual competitiveness). After a string of failed
passion projects, they take off to the Congo in search of a stash of treasure located
underwater on a crashed plane; this time they achieve their goal, but at a
wrenching human cost which directs and underlies their activities on returning
to France. The film evokes the great human dynamics of Howard Hawks: the three
principals have a sense of each other that allows bumps and breaks to be
traversed, whereas a fourth participant who joins the group for a while in the
Congo (Serge Reggiani) is consistently shown to be in small or large ways
suspect, and is ultimately cast out, despite having tried to do the right thing.
It’s typical of the film though that it allows Reggiani’s unnamed character a
late reappearance which establishes his basic moral fortitude; such moments
seem rooted in a pervasive curiosity which has the two men digging into
Laetitia’s humble origins, and to some degree assuming her life trajectory as
their own, with time for charming diversions such as a visit to a rinky-dinky
small-town museum, in which we get to examine just about every stuffed animal and
rusty artifact. The climax delivers all the scenic action the adventure genre
demands, but without any ultimate sense of exultation, ending on another note
of bitter loss and existential arbitrariness.
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