ROUTINE PLEASURES

What do a for model-train hobbyists and the legendary film critic and painter Manny Farber have in common? The desire to recreate the past (the elaborate miniature worlds of the locomotive aficionados, Farber’s prolific canvases)?

“ I did Routine Pleasures in reaction to the success of the twins. Poto and Cabengo was indeed very successful in the United States. […] They are so amazing that I could have, at the limit, filmed them in any way and have an impact. […] So I said to myself, I have to do something a little more complicated. Take a subject as dry as a crust of bread and flush it out with style. Hence this idea of having two elements that have no reason to meet and to pursue the film as the space of their crossing, with me in the middle, building the bridges. […] The United States lives essentially on a geographical axis… In order to make a road movie, I told myself that I had to put the camera on ten centimeters of “road” and examine what happens on those ten centimeters. That’s why I made a train movie that doesn’t move, that takes place in a shed, but that at the same time makes you travel mentally. ” 

Jean-Pierre Gorin
(Interview with Jean-Paul Fargier, Cahiers du cinéma, October 1986)