Le Retour d'Afrique

Stifled by the alienating dead weight of Genevan conventions, a young Swiss couple hatch heady plans to move to Africa and 'work for the Third World'. A last-minute hitch, however, leaves them stuck in their own stripped flat, to come to terms with their own world. Their articulate self-awareness precludes the sort of instinctive, freewheeling revolt of Tanner's La Salamandre, but never leads them into the mere cypher roles of Godard's analogous couple in Le Gai Savoir. Instead, they explore a claustrophobic environment of ideas which is the landscape of Messidor in miniature, and emerge with an optimistic vision of personal politics of the sort worked through later in Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000. Surprisingly warm didacticism.