Adieu, plancher des vaches!

The title of Adieu, plancher des vaches!, farewell to the dry ‘cow country’, is an old sailors’ phrase that expresses a feeling of contempt for dry land. The characters in the film can be compared with sailors who yearn for the sea while they are on land, and at sea are homesick for land. Ioselliani grew up in Georgia, where this happened on a much larger scale: paradise was always somewhere else, usually in the West. Adieu… is however not a political film by an exile: the film provides a light- hearted view of people’s attempts to escape their fate. Nicolas, who grew up as a couch potato in an affluent Paris family, decides at the age of twenty to lead a life of his own. He breaks away from his family and starts working as a window cleaner. His new friends are homeless, vandals, petty crooks. Nicolas was aware of the snobbery of his old milieu, but seems blind to the cruelty of his new one. Life is hard, but has its charms. Of course he falls in love with the beautiful, inconsiderate Paulette. But she loves Gaston, who grew up on the street, where he feels just as imprisoned as Nicolas in his parents’ mansion. Gaston also wants to escape from his milieu, he wants fast cars and beautiful women. He sets to work purposefully, every cent he has he invests in new clothes or a Harley Davidson. And it works too. But what does fate have in store for them?