Youth is tricky to navigate, and there is a point in everyone’s life where we are caught in a very awkward space – old enough to take on adult responsibilities, but too young to be entirely trusted to bring them to fruition. This is a formative moment in one’s life, and a time when we tend to learn more about life than just about any other point, since it really becomes a matter of every person for themselves, with very little (if any) outside help ever being available. This is a subject that Jerzy Skolimowski (one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation, and someone who has consistently defied categorisation as an artistic force) uses as the foundation for Le Départ, in which we are introduced to Marc, who is barely twenty, but yet sees himself as being a bit of a man about town, someone who can get whatever he wants with a bit of coercion and resourcefulness. Unfortunately, this proves to be slightly false when he signs up to take part in a rally, under the belief that he will be able to use his boss’s Porsche, which he used as part of his registration in the race, only to discover that the car will be unavailable to him. Suddenly, he has to scramble to find an alternative, which leads him down a path of numerous misadventures, each one teaching him valuable life lessons that he is not soon going to forget, despite his best efforts. A wickedly funny work that finds the director doing what he does best, namely finding the perfect balance between a strong narrative and unforgettable execution in pursuit of some deeply captivating social and cultural commentary, Le Départ is a very special film, a memorable coming-of-age comedy that feels as fresh and dynamic today as it was nearly sixty years ago, when audiences first encountered Skolimowski ‘s delightfully demented vision of a very different world, one that is filled to the brim with eccentric characters, bizarre circumstances and a sense of inescapable destiny that feels both enthralling and deeply unnerving, becoming one of the esteemed auteur’s most distinctive and daring works.

One of the reasons Skolimowski earned such acclaim was because he started working from quite an early age – despite not even being thirty by the time he made Le Départ, he was already more of a seasoned professional than many of his peers, having written and directed nearly a dozen films by this point, many of which were built around one very common theme that we would see him continue to explore in the coming years: youth. This is the core of the film, which is essentially a series of episodic moments in the life of an ordinary young man whose ambition far outweighs his skills, and who finds himself in frequently challenging scenarios as a result of his tendency to bite off far more than he could possibly chew, which is one of the more common tropes in these delightfully irreverent stories of the misplaced confidence that comes with youth. There isn’t too much thematic content that guides this film – the director is motivated less by an overarching message than he is by the desire to capture a very particular chapter in the life of this young man, who is learning about life on the go. There’s a common idea that we learn more in that ambiguous space between adolescence and adulthood than we ever do in any formal setting, with the “school of life” principle, the idea that the most important lessons are learned through practical experience, being what drives this film. Marc is a young man who believes that the world is his oyster, and while he is not entirely wrong, since fate does tend to favour those who put in the effort to seek out what they believe to be theirs, certain things only become clear once they are encountered in a practical setting. The director is focused on exploring a day in the life of an ordinary person who is trying to establish his place in the world, and the results are quite enticing, the film becoming an earnest and poignant comedy about someone seeking answers to questions they didn’t realise they would have to ask, while also navigating a world they truly do not understand, all the while still giving off the illusion that they are entirely in command of their own personal journey.

There aren’t many actors who are able to consider themselves definitive of cinema to the point where their face alone has come to represent the entire medium. This elite group consists of people like Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart and, most relevant to the present discussion, Jean-Pierre Léaud, who is truly one of the most iconic performers in the history of the medium, and someone we are so fortunate is still with us, being one of the last remaining icons of the French New Wave, a movement that changed how cinema functions, and his character of Antoine Doinel being a mascot for entire generations of artists in every discipline. His performance in Le Départ is nothing outside of his wheelhouse, since he’s playing Marc, yet another eccentric young man whose broad ambitions don’t always quite match his skills or resources, but where he swiftly compensates through sheer gumption. There was always something so magnetic about Léaud when he appeared on screen – despite his relatively ordinary looks and non-descript personality (both of which were merits in his tendency to be cast as working-class individuals, representing the general public), he always stood out, particularly since his astonishing charisma and ability to capture the most intricate details of the human condition were always present in the work he was doing across his career. This is not likely to be viewed as his strongest work (no one who has The 400 Blows, The Mother and the Whore and Out 1: Noli Me Tangere can ever have a relatively small slapstick comedy viewed as their defining achievement), but rather one of the many examples of his magnetism and ability to captivate audiences through simple, nuanced cues that highlight his natural charisma, as well as his ability to play a character that is a bundle of complexities without becoming too heavy-handed, a skill that is truly underrated and warrants so much more attention than it is often afforded.

We can’t talk about Le Départ without mentioning the French New Wave and where this film is situated in relation to that movement. Around the same time as the rise of that very particular style of filmmaking came a concurrent emergence of one that is similar but not quite related, adjacent but never entirely comparable, despite occasional overlap. A film like this not only helps us understand the talents of the director, but also how the French New Wave proved to be so incredibly influential, to the point where even a film produced outside of its confines took inspiration in some ways. No one would consider this to be included, despite the presence of its stars, or its setting and language, but the execution of its ideas is intriguing in how it often subverts the same ideas that many other films produced at the time were focused on examining. The form this film takes is fascinating, and there are not many works that can be considered entirely comparable, since it takes the quiet formal provocation of the French New Wave and combines it with the freewheeling absurdism that populated a lot of Eastern European cinema (particularly those produced in the director’s native Poland in the years when he was establishing himself as a filmmaker) and brings them together to form something quite daring. Skolimowski may not be a director who prioritises style over substance (being an example of an auteur who is equally adept at both), but he does make some aesthetic choices here that do feel unique. Some shot compositions are extremely original, and give the film a sense of surrealism that may not make sense for this kind of story based on a cursory glance, but become part of the narrative in creative ways, acting as bridges between the film’s oscillation between the slapstick comedy and uncanny psychological elements that give it so much personality and nuance. It’s a superbly-directed film, a work that takes a lot of inspiration from the other movements present at the time, but quietly redefines them into something much more profound in the process.

Le Départ is the kind of film that is discovered more often than it is recommended, a simple but effective gem of a film that brings together two exceptional artists – one a genre-defying filmmaker who transcended generations and cinematic movements to redefine the medium in his own terms, the other an iconic actor who had perhaps the greatest career out of any of his contemporaries – and allows them to tell a rivetting story of a young man seeking answers in a confusing world. It’s a delightfully irreverent film that moves at a rapid pace, since at only 80 minutes in length, there’s not much time to actually expand on many of these ideas, meaning that a lot has to be compressed into a short running time, which makes the fact that the film feels so complete quite an achievement. Skolimowski is not a director who is given nearly enough credit, despite being such a formative figure, someone whose work extends over more than half a century, and which continues to be as exciting as it is intriguing, especially since he refused to carve out a particular niche and instead chose to march to the beat of his own drum. Le Départ is the perfect summary of his skills – it is visually dynamic, narratively compelling and tonally a jumble of endearing ideas, being as much an indictment on the banality of existence as it is a poetic statement on the power of romance, which are core components in what eventually reveals itself to be a relatively solid coming-of-age comedy. There is so much to adore about this film, and the less one knows about its various twists and turns, the more likely we are to appreciate its unconventional perspective and ability to capture so much in very little time. A triumph in both form and content, Le Départ is a terrific treasure of a film, and something that is worth seeking out for anyone who desires something wholeheartedly original and never anything short of enthralling.