Perhaps the most direct link between Losey and Alain Resnais lies in this rarely screened political melodrama, based on the sequel to the novel La Guerre est finie, which Resnais filmed in 1966, with Yves Montand playing more or less the same character in both films. Like The Assassination of Trotsky and Resnais' film, Les Routes du sud looks ruefully back, with reluctant maturity and bitter clarity, at failed political idealism. Montand brings a meditative world-weariness to the part of an exiled Spanish screenwriter living in relative wealth in France but haunted both by Franco's victory and by his own retreat from politics. A late life opportunity to reengage with Spanish politics suddenly allows him to confront his ambivalence about both his past and the son with whom he has grown estranged.