“It was an almost perfect cone of snow, simple in outline as if a child had drawn it, and impossible to classify as to size, height or nearness. It was so radiant, so serenely poised, that he wondered for a moment if it were real at all”.

These lines from James Hilton’s famous novel Lost Horizons figure – like a thematic landmark – in the opening sequence of Møller’s new film En Route. The novel is about a journey to the fictional valley of Shangri-La, a utopian paradise on earth somewhere in the Himalayas.

Like the earlier films, En Route is comprised of static shots of changing landscapes, the key difference being that most of the film is shot from the angle of the hood of a car. As Møller’s title suggests – with a reference to Claude Lelouch’s cult classic C'était un rendez-vous (1976), which is also filmed with a camera mounted on the hood of a car as the director races nonstop through a deserted Paris during the holidays – we are on a journey. The film consists of diary-like footage from a car travelling through Europe. In its clear homage to the road movie genre, and its intertextual references to classics like Two Lane Blacktop and Easy Rider, the film differs from Møller’s earlier film works in being closer to the film language of classical narrative film. Not without a hint of irony, Møller deploys a broad palette of classical camera transitions, from fading in, fading out and dissolves – which mark changes in time and place, as well as the shift to other levels of reality and flashbacks – to crosscuts and stylistic clichés, like wipes and split screens.

Text: Lotte Møller