Un étrange voyage
1981 film by Alain Cavalier

Un étrange voyage is a 1981 French drama film directed by Alain Cavalier, starring Jean Rochefort and writer/filmmaker Camille de Casabianca. The film won the Prix Louis-Delluc in 1980.
Plot
Pierre, in Paris on his own in his forties and working as a picture restorer, has little contact with his daughter Amélie, a student who he supports, and none with his ex-wife Claire. His closest relationship is with his 80-year-old widowed mother, still active in her house in Troyes, who telephones to say she is taking a train that afternoon to visit him. She is not on the train, nor the next one. In the morning he drives to Troyes and, with a policeman and a locksmith, breaks into the tidy but empty house.
Pierre is convinced that she did take the train as she said and, by accident or malice, fell from it before reaching Paris. Amélie, on vacation after doing well in her exams, agrees with his reasoning and the two get permission from the railway company to search the 150 kilometres of track. For days on end they comb the verges, spending the nights in little rural hotels. They fool around and fight, share each other's thoughts and then part in a rage.
The public source identifies “Un étrange voyage” as 1981 film by Alain Cavalier. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around étrange, voyage and film.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3549145. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Un étrange voyage” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.