Philippe Reypens | L'Échappée sauvage (Escape into the Wild) / 2017

a visual tone poem to childhood love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Philippe Reypens (screenwriter and director) L'Échappée sauvage (Escape into the Wild) / 2017

 

A young French-speaking boy is being chauffeured along country roads, a small sitting near him as he either being returned to his country estate or being taken to relatives in the country. His scrubbed ruddy complexion and worried look give him away as a wealthy schoolboy, although obviously we know little actually about him.

     Suddenly the car conks out, stopping in the middle of the road. The driver pops open the engine, gets out and checks it, frustrated that we perhaps cannot find the problem or sees that it is necessary for him to go get help in order to continue the trip.

      He takes off his hat, fans himself with it, and walks to the back of the car where he opens up the trunk and takes out a small petrol can, obviously the problem. He briefly speaks to the boy, a conversation to which we are not privy. It’s clear, however, that he telling him to remain in the car while he walks to a gas station to bring back enough gas to continue the journey.

      The boy falls into a doze, only to be awakened by two young almost feral looking youths, a boy and a girl, staring in at him, pounding on the window which he has previously rolled up. He attempts to ignore them, but the naughty kids play games, the boy running to other side, opening the door and quickly stealing the boys suitcase before they run off back into the golden-lit woods.

     Through the now open window he watches them disappear. He seems to have no choice but to leave the safety of the car and run after them. He finds the children together and the boy hands him back his suitcase as they stand taking in each other. The two walk off, while the traveling boy sits down the suitcase, smiles slightly, and follows them.

      They are now on the run, the new boy after them. He soon discovers pine cones, watches the two, brother and sister(?), fence with sticks, and race off again. The two feral children overtake a drunken man, pushing him to the ground, but when the boy still in his tie passes, the drunk looks up, smiling, almost as if he recognizes the slow look of the stranger as being somewhat sympathetic, out of the ordinary. Perhaps he recognizes him as belonging to the local estate? Or maybe he is simply enchanted by the new boy’s true beauty.

      The three soon reach a stream, a kind of swamp where the new boy suddenly perceives he is now walking on grass saturated by the water. He stops, unsure of proceeding, but moves on nonetheless, seeming to follow.

     Yet suddenly he has reached another road. Is it the same one in which his car has been traveling? Now there is no car waiting. He has now reached a farm where the two wild ones suddenly burst out from under a pile of straw, but soon show him how to feed a young calf. The feral young boy, also a true beauty, rests in a pile of straw, almost languidly, the image suggesting almost a sexual position.

   But soon he is pushing his sister, this time in almost parody of such rustic utopias, on a hay-cart. It no longer matters, because soon after the girl has been replaced by the city boy, and the pleasure on both of they faces expresses the sexual joy of the moment. A moment or so later in this youthful childhood utopia the two boys have found they way up to a tree limb where they sit, the one with his arm around the other, as the girl below almost tosses festoons of straw at them.

   When the city boy attempts to return to the ground he sprains his foot in the short fall, and the girl surrounds it in a wrap, now given her own time to flirt with the newcomer, her brother standing by, quite clearly somewhat jealous. The farm boy quickly moves forward and pulls up the city boy, taking him off to his own territory.

   The girl now sits alone in mute silence.

   The local boy takes the newcomer to a real river, revealing the beautiful spot as if it were a personal treasure, shoving him off the rock before realizing the new boy cannot swim and diving in to save him.

     Now stretched out almost naked in only his underwear, the city boy smiles as the feral young boy stands over him with what appears to be almost a look of pleasure and satisfaction. He has clearly won over his new friend and they have become deep comrades, even if as children they do not quite yet understand their actions as being sexual.

    Finally, the driver, petrol can in hand, arrives back to the car only to discover his charge missing.

   By this time the two boys have whipped themselves up in the dying light into almost a frenzy of joyful play, the city, still without a shirt, jumping on the shoulders of the other. This is most definitely the play of sexually engaged innocents. It is truly love without a name.

   The two boys arrive back at the car, jump into the front seat together, with the farm boy driving off, only to stop a few feet later for the girl, who joins them in the backseat. God knows where they are going, perhaps to heaven.

  Belgian filmmaker Reypens’ film, broadcast on French TV, is a visual tone poem to childhood pleasures, with all the sexuality that those experiences involve. Although there is nothing overtly gay about this, it is clearly recognized by most gay film individuals as being stuffed with childhood versions of queer sexuality, and appears on most LGBTQ+ lists.

 

Los Angeles, June 16, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2026).