The Best Way to Walk

The Best Way to Walk (La Meilleure Façon de marcher, 1976) is a French drama by Claude Miller you can watch online on iFILM. Summer 1960, a children's camp in the French countryside. Two counselors share the season: athletic, swaggering Marc and the withdrawn Philippe, the director's son. One evening Marc walks in on Philippe in front of a mirror — dressed and made up as a woman.

Marc keeps the secret. He also refuses to let it go. What follows is months of needling and quiet cruelty, half contempt, half something Marc can't name in himself. Patrick Dewaere makes Marc a knot of aggression and unease, and the standoff between the two men turns into a study of masculinity, the masks people wear, and what gets hidden inside the sealed little world of a summer camp.

This was Miller's directing debut after years assisting Truffaut and Godard, and it remains one of French cinema's most delicate portraits of repressed desire. Nothing is spelled out; everything lives in glances and pauses. Worth seeking out if you like chamber-sized psychological cinema from the seventies, where the real fight happens under the skin. Stream The Best Way to Walk (1976) online on iFILM.