As a cinephile and critic, Moullet was well aware of the key role played by natural settings in certain kinds of films (silent Scandinavia, the 5Os westerns of Anthony Mann) and as a keen fan of the mountainous Hautes Alpes department of his country, where his family had spent much time, he thus took full advantage of the opportunity for his second feature to make a low budget, termite style exploration of landscape which should be remembered along with Sjostrom and Mann I mentioned.Another,later film which comes to mind is Jarmusch's Dead Man, where there is a similar progression through a variety of settings which stand incongruously in quite a contrast to each other.Moullet plots his light hearted story of young women with illicit goods in such a way that the spectator can almost map out the terrain from point to point, the way say in Mann's Men in War we feel we know the exact layout of each action.and he would pursue such a charting of Hautes Alpes spots even further with his A Girl is a Gun, adding color and widescreen to the mix.The viewer of these films is sorely tempted to get on the next flight to the French Alps and hike up these mountain locations for real.
