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If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Marie (Christiane Coppé) has an incurable inability to communicate with the outside world, and has been in care on three separate occasions. We first see her sitting in isolation, rocking to and fro forlornly in a chair in the misty gardens of a stately asylum. It's the classic, haunting type of scene French Director Jean Rollin excels at. Curiously, Marie begins a rapport with fellow inmate angry, loud Michelle (Laurence Dubas), and together, they plan to escape from the institution. Once again, Rollin's predilection for a young female duo as main players comes into play here. The two girls instantly find comfort in one another, their more tender scenes illuminated by Philippe D'Aram's melancholy score.To steer Rollin away from his favoured theme of supernatural horrors, Jacques Ralf was drafted in to co-script the story, much to Rollin's discomfort. Unusually, some of the more 'talky' scenes were cut by the director, who usually refrains from cutting much at all. We are still left with a wordier storyline than we're used to. Long considered a lost film, it was with great anticipation the eventual project was found - and it is that reason more than anything else that 'The Escapees' has not enjoyed great acclaim among Rollin aficionados: the hype put the film on a near-impossible pedestal.Having said that, events are very slow-moving here, and not hugely filled with incident. But then, that's a trademark of Rollin. This, however, doesn't lend itself to the typical dream-like atmosphere due to its very real setting. The two girls' adventures are a curious delight especially an almost surreal and rowdy erotic dance performance in the middle of a freezing night-time junkyard, and so is a very haunting set-piece in an abandoned ice-rink (Coppé was hired partly because of her proficiency as a skater).Two increasingly disillusioned girls meeting a disparate band of other disillusioned people: dreamers, outcasts and drifters. This may not make for the most scintillating narrative, and some scenes do drag, but 'The Escapees' contains more than enough Rollin-esque touches to keep me happy. Equally, the oppressively drab, unfriendly, rainy, cold darkness of many of the locations still somehow comes across as being strangely poetic. Regulars including Natalie Perrey, Louise Dhour ("Sometimes it's better not to know what your immediate future holds,") and mighty Brigitte Lahiae (and Rollin himself) are reassuring just by being there, even if their characters are further examples of the kind of people and societies the two girls are trying to escape. The hopelessness of their ambition is compounding by a very sad finale which seems nevertheless to be tragically inevitable.

Rebellious spitfire Michelle (a lively performance by the fetching Laurence Dubas) and the painfully shy and forlorn Marie (beautifully played with aching vulnerability by the lovely Christiane Coppe) are a pair of troubled young women who manage to escape from a sanitarium. The pair do their best to avoid detection from the authorities by joining up with a traveling band of exotic dancers.Director Jean Rollin, who also co-wrote the odd and thoughtful script with Jacques Ralf, presents an unusual, affecting, and interesting cinematic meditation on the basic youthful human need to live a free and spontaneous independent existence that unfolds at a gradual pace, vividly captures stunning moments of raw beauty and wrenching poignancy (Marie's solo figure skating set piece at an empty ice rink in particular is simply breathtaking), does his customary ace job of crafting an enchanting dreamlike atmosphere, and astutely nails both the danger and excitement of throwing caution to the wind through living a rootless peripatetic lifestyle. Dubas and Coppe do sterling work and display an appealing unforced natural chemistry in the leads; they receive sturdy support from Marianne Valiot as scrappy thief Sophie, Louise Dhour as compassionate nightclub owner Madame Louise, Patrick Perrott as the sensitive Pierrot, and Brigitte Lahaie as a snooty rich bitch. The downbeat ending packs a devastating punch. Claude Becognee's sumptuous cinematography and Philippe D'Aram's spare melancholy score are both up to speed. Offbeat and worth a look.

Escapees, The (1981)** (out of 4) Forgotten film from Rollin about two girls who escape from a mental hospital and go on an odyssey. Michelle is the rougher of the two as she knows how to survive. Marie on the other hand has a fear of people yet for some reason she is attached to Michelle and wants to stay close to her on this journey. If you're looking for some sort of plot then you're going to be disappointed because there isn't one here. In the interview on the DVD Rollin talks about the various issues with the production of the film and how when they finally got it filmed, no one wanted it. After being released on video in a few countries, the film was pretty much given away to air on TV before the eventual DVD release. I didn't think the film was as bad as many had made it out to be but it's not too good either and in the end this is certainly for Rollin completest only. Those new to the director would certainly be best to start with one of his vampire films or better known works like THE LIVING DEAD GIRL. This movie actually shares a lot in common with the director's 1980 film NIGHT OF THE HUNTED, which is one I really hated. This one here works if you view it as some sort of strange nightmare or surreal trip to some unknown world. Everything we see is a reality but you might as well look at it as some sort of dream because none of it really makes any sense and in the end you'll probably be asking yourself what the entire point of the film was. I'm not sure what the point was but we do get some classic touches from Rollin. One scene involves a rather beautiful ice-skating sequence that packs a nice little punch. Another scene happens just before it and that's when the girls are standing on some docks letting giant waves hit them. The sexuality in the film is actually quite low as is the nudity up until the very end when Brigitte Lahaie shows up and does a very sexy little number. The two female leads fit their roles just fine and the supporting cast isn't too bad either. The biggest flaw in the film is its 101-minute running time, which is just way too long considering nothing happens and there are several scenes that pretty much just replay things that have happened earlier.

Marie and Michelle are escaping from a lunatic asylum. Michelle is a tough girl who knows how to survive on the road, but the extremely shy Marie desperately clings to her until Michelle gives in and promises help. The two get into a lot of trouble which puts their friendship to a test.Rollin's lost movie, and lost for a good reason, as the director told in several interviews (one on the British DVD, for example): it was simply so poor no distributor bought it. The director blames this mostly on the scriptwriter. The producer had hired someone to keep the director from continuing with his usual vampire mystery stuff, and that kind of co-operation against each other couldn't work. However, "The Escapees" has enough magic moments to be worth watching. Especially when people stop talking such as in the ending, or when Marie skates on the ice, imagining she is admired by a crowd, but only Michelle is secretly watching her.