The Escapees
Jean Rollin, 1981, 107 mins
AKA Les Échappées AKA The Runaways AKA Les Paumées Du Petit Matin
One of Jean Rollin’s rarest and least seen films, The Escapees centres on two young women, one feisty, the other quiet and withdrawn, who are on the run from an asylum for the insane. While travelling from place to place they have a number of surreal encounters including spending time with a group of travelling erotic dancers.
The Escapees contains all the magic and fairy-tale qualities of cult films like Fascination (1979) and Requiem for a Vampire (1971), and has everything one expects from a Rollin film, including two beautiful young women, a moving and poetic sequence in an ice rink, startling scenes of unexpected violence, burlesque shows in a junkyard and erotic lesbian encounters with Brigitte Lahaie!