File Fill ‘er Up With Super under films where I only know half of what’s going on, but as I write this, I’m living for most of what director and co-writer Alain Cavalier gives. Cavalier’s films are coming to OVID soon, and I chose this one, a collaborative, seemingly improvised project. It starts out with two men, Klouk and Philippe (Bernard Crombey and Xavier Saint-Macary, respectively also co-writers).

Klouk and Philippe’s job is to drive an expensive car to some rich client in southern France. And on the way they pick up Daniel and Charles (Patrick Bouchitey and Etienne Chicot, also co-writers). Their journey shows France in all its modernity, as aeroplanes and highways cover France like most countries. And because they’re dudes, they pick fights and jeopardise the job that someone paid them to do.

Even if this is a guy’s trip, the family and the home front play within their minds, as French movies make it feel like most French people are rich, and this one feels similar. Although there are scenes in Fill ‘er Up With Super where sometimes, someone reveals their class differences. For instance Charles reveals where he used to vacation, which then starts gentle ribbing from the other men.

There are some valid criticisms of Fill ‘er Up With Super, a film that is very 1970s, one criticism being that the men are hard to tell apart, but that eventually feels moot. This feels like a comedy the same way Joshua Jackson explains how The Bear is a comedy. The situations are absurd, and it’s like watching new friends and their little inside jokes from far away.

Fill ‘er Up With Super shows that despite being French, men will act like borderline unsympathetic boys. The film toes its lines and reins its characters back in, exposing these boomers’ tragicomic inner lives. Again, even if they drive away, they still have their wives who frustrate them, even from afar. And the film shows them acting out in ways that we viewers really don’t have to understand.

Some compare Fill ‘er Up With Super with Cassavetes or Monte Hellman but I’ll argue something different. Because this film feels like Godard’s Le Weekend but less boorish and it has much lower stakes. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, even though there are many ways for these characters to mess up. And even if they do, there are ways for them to recover just like in real life.

Again, watch Fill ‘er Up With Super as part of OVID’s Alain Cavalier retrospective.