Vallée, La

Director: Barbet Schroeder
Year Released: 1972
Rating: 1.5

A young woman looking for rare feathers joins a group of hippies in Papua New Guinea in an effort to find "The Valley" - an uncharted territory some believe is actually Paradise on Earth. Clearly a product of its time, with the Pink Floyd soundtrack and Flower Power mindset and free love - today, it looks woefully naive, and the scenes in which the troupe feast and smoke and dance with the natives seems like New Agey hokum. A speech towards the end of the picture adds a little reality to the situation - once innocence is lost, it's lost - but then it ends abruptly, as if the 'sexually liberated' group of wannabes did indeed find their utopia. Frankly, I'd like to think the final few shots represent their grim death by starvation (and the 'light at the end of the tunnel' meaning brain death), but Schroeder probably intended otherwise.