Truckasaurus

>> Samuel Le Bihan sheds some skin and learns to drive a bulldozer in Peau Neuve

By JONATHAN GOLDSTEIN

In Peau Neuve, Samuel Le Bihan plays Alain, a young family man who earns his living testing video games. While some might think that Alain is living La Vida Loca, he spends most of his time dreaming of quitting. In one of his dreams, we see him riding to work on the metro during rush hour and announcing that he is kissing his old life goodbye. As the crowd applauds, you can't help rooting for him, too.

So Alain finally quits his job, and what does he decide to do? Learn to drive a bulldozer. In an age when half the boxes on the video shelf have men toting guns, Peau Neuve interestingly uses trucks as its central metaphor for masculinity; men are likened to little boys obsessed with their Tonka toys.

During the week, Alain attends bulldozer college out in the sticks and on the weekends, he commutes home to his family. As he shuttles back and forth, we see his emotional and physical unravelling. Alain's wife can't understand the whole bulldozer thing--it takes another man to understand that--and the men at the camp speak the same unspoken language of bulldozer idolatry. As his life becomes enmeshed with the men at the camp, his marriage begins to fall apart and Peau Neuve becomes essentially a film about male bonding. Interestingly, it's directed by a woman, first-time director Emilie Deleuze, and what she puts across is that, left to their own devices, men become pretty creepy creatures.

Alain does get the change he's looking for, but it comes with a price. By the time graduation comes around, we see him on a precipice, unsure of what he has changed for. Like Dustin Hoffman on the school bus at the end of The Graduate, he has no idea what will come next. The film's ultimate success is that we are left in ambiguity, wondering along with him what all this change will yield. :

Peau Neuve opens Friday, March 24